Death Wore White

1

Monday, 9 February

The Alfa Romeo ran a lipstick?red smear across a sepia landscape. Snow flecked the sands at the edge of the crimped waters of the Wash. To the landward side lay the saltmarsh, a weave of winter white around stretches of cold black water. And out at sea a convoy of six small boats were caught in a stunning smudge of purple and gold where the sun was setting.

The sports car nudged the speed limit as Sarah Baker?Sibley watched the first flake of snow fall on the windscreen. She swept it aside with a single swish of the wipers and punched the lighter into the dashboard, her lips counting to ten, a cigarette held ready between her teeth.

Ten seconds. She thrummed her fingers on the leather?bound steering wheel.

It was two minutes short of five o’clock and the Alfa’s headlights were waking up the catseyes. She pulled the lighter free of its holder. The ringlet of heated wire seemed to lift her mood and she laughed to herself, drawing in the nicotine.

A spirograph of ice had encroached on the windscreen, so she turned the heating up to maximum. The indicator showed the outside temperature at 0 °C, then briefly -1 °C.

She swished more snowflakes off the windscreen. Attached to the dashboard by a sucker was a little picture frame holding a snapshot of a girl with hair down to her waist, wearing a swimsuit on a sun?drenched beach. She touched the image as if it were an icon.

Rounding a sharp right bend she saw tail lights ahead again for a few seconds. And a sign, luminous, regulation black on yellow, in the middle of the carriageway, an AA insignia in the top left corner.

DIVERSION

Flood

An arrow pointed bluntly to the left — seaward down a narrow unmetalled road.

‘Sod it.’ She hit the steering wheel with the heel of her palm. Slowing the Alfa, she looked at her watch: 5.01 p.m. She had to pick her daughter up at 5.30 outside the school. She was always there, like clockwork. That was one of the big pluses of owning her own business: she kept her own time. And that’s why she always took the old coast road, not the new dual carriageway, because this way there were never any traffic jams, even in the summer. Just an open road. Once, perhaps twice, she’d got caught up at the shop and phoned ahead to say she’d be late. Jillie had walked home then, but Sarah didn’t want to let her down.

Looking in the rear?view again she saw that the following car was close, so she put the Alfa in first and swung it off the coast road onto the snow?covered track. The headlights raked the trees as she turned the car, but she failed to see that they fleetingly lit a figure, stock?still, dressed in a full?length dark coat flecked with snow, the head — hooded — turned away. But she did see a road sign.

Siberia Belt

Ahead were the tail lights of the vehicle she had been following. There was a sudden silence as a snow flurry struck, muffling the world outside. The wind returned, thudding against the offside, fist blows deadened by a boxer’s glove. She searched the rear?view mirror for the comforting sight of headlights behind. There were none. But the tail lights ahead were still visible: warm, glowing and safe. She pressed on quickly in pursuit.

Half a mile away Detective Inspector Peter Shaw stood on the beach as the snow fell, trying to smile into an Arctic north wind. The seascape was glacier?blue, the white horses whipped off the peaks of the waves before they could break. Offshore a sandbank was dusted with snow — icing sugar on marzipan. As quickly as the snow flurry had come, it was gone. But he knew a blizzard would be with them by nightfall, the snow clouds already massed on the horizon like a range of mountains.

‘Tide’s nearly up,’ he said, licking a snowflak offhis e off his lips. ‘So it should be here. Right here.’ He tapped his boot rhythmically on the spot, creating a miniature quicksand inside his footprint, and zipped up his yellow waterproof jacket. ‘A bright yellow drum, right?’ he asked. ‘Mustard, like the other one. Floating a foot clear of the water. So where is it?’

Detective Sergeant George Valentine stood six foot downwind, his face turned away from the sea. He stifled a yawn by clenching his teeth. His eyes streamed water. An allergy — seaweed perhaps, or salt on the air. Valentine looked at his feet, black slip?ons oozing salt water. He was too old for this: five years off retirement, rheumatism in every bone. They’d got the call from HM Coastguard an hour before: toxic waste, spotted drifting inshore off Scolt Head Island.

The injury was covered by a dressing, secured with a plaster across the socket, the inflamed red edges of a fresh scar just visible beneath. He touched it now, moving it slightly to relieve the pressure. The chemical had proved a mystery: an unstable mix of residual sulphuric and nitric acid, the by?products of some poorly monitored manufacturing process. A ‘class eight’ substance; highly corrosive, with a ferocious ability to attack epithelial tissue. Skin.

‘So where is it?’ Shaw asked again. Standing still like this was a form of torture. He wanted to run along the water’s edge, feel his heart pounding, blood rushing, the intoxicating flood of natural painkillers soaking his brain — the runner’s high.

He raised a small telescope to his good eye, the iris as pale and blue as falling water, scanning the seascape.

DS Valentine looked at his watch. He’d bought it for?1 and was pretty sure the word ROLEX was fake. Its tick?tock was oddly loud. He shivered, his head like a vulture’s, hung low on a thin neck. He tried to keep his mouth shut because he knew his teeth would ache if they got caught by the wind.

A radio crackled and Valentine retrieved it from the shapeless raincoat he was wearing. He listened, said simply, ‘Right.’ Fumbling it back inside the folds of the coat he produced a tube of mints, popping one, crunching it immediately.

‘Coastguard. They lost sight of the drum an hour ago. The water’s churning up with the tide.’ He shrugged as if he knew the moods of the ocean. ‘Not hopeful.’

Shaw ran a hand through close?cropped fair hair. They stood together, one looking south, the other north, wondering how it had come to this: Shaw and Valentine, West Norfolk Constabulary’s latest investigative duo.

Some joker in admin, thought Shaw, some old lag who knew the past and didn’t care about the future. They needed a new partner for Shaw, who at thirty?three years of age was the force’s youngest DI, the whiz?kid with the fancy degree and a father once tipped to be the next chief constable. And they’d come up with George Valentine — a living relic of a different world, where cynical coppers waged a losing war against low life on the street.

It was their first week as partners; already — for both of them — it seemed like a lifetime.

Shaw looked around. He’d played on this beach as a child. ‘Let’s get up there,’ he said, pointing at a low hill in the dunes. ‘Gun Hill. Get some height. We might see it then.’

Valentine nodded without enthusiasm. He turned his back on the sea wind, looking inland, along the curve of the high?water mark. ‘There,’ he said, taking a bare hand reluctantly from his coat pocket.

A yellow metal oil drum, on its side now, rolling in with the waves.

‘Let’s go,’ said Shaw, already jogging; a compact, nearly effortless canter.

The lid of the drum was rusted and crinkled so that the contents had begun to seep out. From six feet he could smell it, the edge of ammonia almost corrosive. The liquid spilling down the side was Day?Glo green, the paint of the drum blistering on contact.

‘I’ll get the Coastguard,’ said Valentine, breathless, digging out the radio. ‘The boat could be out there — they’ll have dumped others.’

‘And call St James’s,’ said Shaw. ‘They need to get a chemical team out to make this safe and get it off the beach. We better stay till they get here. Give them the grid reference.’ Shaw read out the numbers from his hand?held GPS.

Telegraph, then turned with his arms full.

Which is when he saw something else in the waves. Ingol Beach shelved gently out to sea, so even though it was a hundred yards away it was already catching the bottom, buckling slightly, flexing in the white water. An inflatable raft, a child’s summer plaything in Disney colours. Shaw stood for a few seconds watching it inch ashore. Thirty yards out it ran aground, snagged.

Valentine watched his DI pulling off his boots and socks. Jesus! he thought, looking around, hoping they were still alone, hoping most of all that he’d stop at the socks. Shaw waded on, the jolt of the iced water almost electric, making his bones ache.

There was something in the raft, something that didn’t respond to the shuffle and bump of the waves. A dead weight. When he saw the hands — both bare — and the feet, in light trainers swollen with seawater, he knew it was the body of a man: the black hair on the hands, a chunky signet ring. He felt his pulse suddenly thump in his ears as his body reacted to the sight of death. The atavistic urge to flee, to run from danger, was almost overwhelming. And there was the sensation that time had stopped, as if he’d been caught in the middle of an

He forced himself to observe; to step out of the scene.

Dead — but for how long? Less than forty?eight hours. The arms and legs were askew, locked in ugly angles, so rigor had yet to pass.

He put a hand on the side of the raft to steady it, his fingers gripping a raised handle at the prow. Jeans, a T?shirt, a heavy fur?lined jacket only half on, leaving one arm free. The limb was thick, knotted with muscle, the hidden shoulder broad. In the bottom of the boat there was an inch of swilling bloody seawater.

Valentine met him on the dry sand, and they pulled the raft round so that what was left of the sunset caught the dead man’s head; unavoidable now, lifeless, despite the movement of the waves. The human face: Peter Shaw’s passion, each unique balance and imbalance of features as individual as a fingerprint. He noted the bloated, profound pallor, like cold fat, with almost iridescent tinges of blue and green. A young man, stubble on the chin, the eyes half?open but flat, lightless, one eyelid more closed than the other. The lateral orbital lines — crow’s feet — deeply scored, as if he’d spent a lifetime squinting in the sun. The muscles beneath defined the skin like the surface of a piece of beaten metal. But it was the mouth that drew Shaw’s attention. The lips, uneven lines, were peeled back from teeth which were smeared with blood.

‘Shit,’ said Valentine, turning, taking three steps and vomiting into the sand.

He came back, dabbing at his lips. ‘Sight of blood,’ he

Shaw tried to reanimate the victim’s face in his mind as he’d been trained to do. He tightened up the jaw, balanced the eyes, replaced the graceful bow of the lips. Not a cerebral face, a muscular face.

It was Valentine who first saw the mark on the arm. The seawater had washed it clean and so it bled no more, but there was no mistaking the shape: a bite. A human bite. The teeth puncturing the skin deeply, viciously driving into the sinew and muscle, almost meeting in a crisp double incision.

Sarah Baker?Sibley pulled the Alfa up three car lengths behind stationary tail lights. The vehicle ahead had stopped, a fallen pine tree blocking the way, lit silver by the headlights. Looking ahead she saw that it wasn’t a car but a small pick?up truck, with an open back, and a covered low load. The cab had a rear window which showed a light within through frosted glass. The engine idled, the exhaust fumes spirited away each time there was a breath of wind. In a lull she heard music: something urban, jagged and loud. Then silence, and the next track, louder, even less melodic. The flurry of snow had passed, but flakes still fell.

She activated central locking and searched her handbag for her mobile. The latest model: a gift from one of her suppliers, retail price?230. Internet link, GPS, camera, video, the casing decorated with a detail from Monet’s Water Lilies.

NO SIGNAL

Searching network

She threw the mobile onto the passenger seat. Ahead the snow lay three inches thick on the road, as clean as hotel linen, the two parallel tyre tracks just visible, running forward to the stranded truck.

She watched as the man levered himself out of the driver’s seat, straightening, with a hand on the car for support. He struggled forward, but when the wind blew he stopped, braced, waiting for a lull.

He lowered his face to the closed driver’s window. A strained smile, the white hair matted with snow, the plump fingers holding an outsized working jacket to his throat. Glasses, heavy with black frames, magnified his eyes, which were milky with age. The cold had brought some blood to his cheeks but otherwise he was pale, drained, a cold sweat on his forehead.

‘You OK?’ he said when she wound the window down an inch. She heard the sound of music again, louder, from the pick?up truck.

‘We’re stuck,’ she said, briskly. ‘I need to get through — I’m picking up my daughter from school. Could you check ahead, see if we can move the tree?’

He looked forward, licking his lips, reluctant, but then set out. She watched the prints he made in the snow — a single line of flat?footed impressions, slightly unsteady. He slipped at the edge of the ditch when the wind blew, his arms flying out in a crooked semaphore, the coat billowing.

‘That’s all we need,’ she said out loud, punching in the lighter. ‘Grandad in the soup.’

A minute, less, and he was back, out of breath so that he had to lean on the Alfa’s roof. ‘OK then. We’re not gonna move the tree — not now. He says we’ll have to all back out. Have you got a mobile?’ he asked.

‘No signal.’

‘Same with him. I don’t own one.’ He rubbed one of his eyes under the thick spectacles. Despite the cold she could see now that his whole face was wet with sweat.

Baker?Sibley pushed smoke out of her nostrils, her lips pressed in a humourless line. ‘You should take it easy,’ she said.

He held his jacket’s lapels together. ‘I’m OK. I’ll try and reverse back to the turn, there was a farm track there, just give me a few minutes.’ He set off before she had time to answer.

He tottered back to his car and wiped the snow from the windscreen with his sleeve before lowering himself into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. He peered down at the dashboard, then at the rear?view mirror.

‘Come on, come on,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s not a fucking Space Shuttle.’

He didn’t move. She threw open the door and stepped out into the night, holding a hand above her eyes to stop the snowflakes snagging her lashes. The cold made her back arch and she hunched her shoulders to try to protect the exposed skin at her neck.

It was what stretched behind the Corsa that made Sarah Baker?Sibley swear. A line of headlamps running back, all stranded now in the snow.

She looked up and let some of the flakes settle on her face. ‘Why me?’ she asked. She thought of Jillie trudging home in the snow. ‘And why now?’

On cue the blizzard finally broke, the snow thickening, the wind driving it in from the sea. Visibility dropped to a few feet. She brushed flakes from her eyelids and scrambled back into the safety of the car.

In the blizzard Shaw and Valentine worked quickly, dragging the raft across the sands to the DI’s black Land Rover, parked beyond a copse of hawthorns. By the time they had a tarpaulin secured, weighting the corners with rocks, the snow was settling. Then they sat it out, Shaw watching the high tide boiling on the sands through an open window. He’d been a policeman for eleven years but this was the first time he’d discovered a corpse: he was distressed to find that the emotional impact was refusing to fade. His stomach felt empty, and he kept seeing the dead man’s mouth, the blood terracotta red between the white enamel of the teeth.

Valentine bent forward, his hands over the warm?air vent, his throat glugging with phlegm as the hot dust triggered his immune system. He’d binned his last packet of Silk Cut back at the station, so he closed his eyes, trying not to think about nicotine, trying not to think about the corpse in the raft. But the image of the apparently self?inflicted wound was difficult to shake off. He took a call on the radio: Control said the force pathologist was on her way and a unit of the West Norfolk CSI team was assembling, but the snowfall had brought chaos to the coastal roads, so they could be some time.

The storm itself passed in twenty minutes, rolling

Shaw’s patience snapped. He flung the door open and shuddered in the super?cooled air. He threw the keys to Valentine. ‘Roll the Land Rover out on the beach and put the lights on — there’s a floodlight there.’ He leant in and tapped a red switch. ‘Walk the high?water mark, see if you can find anything — clothing, a weapon, just anything. Any footprints in the sand other than ours, mark them with the scene?of?crime flags — they’re in the boot — and there’s some tape; try and box off the point where I dragged him ashore, although it’s probably under water by now. There are evidence bags in the glove. When you see the fire brigade unit or our boys, fill them in. Scene?of?crime rules — so no smoking.’

Valentine popped another mint.

‘I’m going to climb, see what I can see. I’ll be ten, no more.’

‘Right,’ said Valentine.

Shaw detected the grudging note, a single syllable that said so much. He recalled George Valentine at his father’s deathbed, a glass of malt whisky in his hand, a cigarette burning between the yellowed fingers.

Boredom, bungalow and early retirement (enforced) had killed DCI Jack Shaw. Luckily, they killed him quickly. The early exit to Civvy Street had come care of his father’s last, notorious, case. Until then they’d been the force’s star team: DCI Jack Shaw and DI George Valentine. A pair of old? fashioned coppers in an old?fashioned world. And so he knew what Valentine was thinking: that a

Valentine turned over the pair of dice attached to his lighter and keys. Ivory and green, with gold dots. ‘What’s that smell?’ he asked before Shaw had gone ten yards.

Shaw stopped, sniffed the sea breeze. ‘Could be mint, George. You crunch any more of those things you’ll start scaring the sheep.’ But Valentine was right, there was something else on the breeze, something laced with the ozone and seaweed. ‘Petrol. An outboard?’ asked Shaw.

Valentine produced a handkerchief and dabbed his streaming eyes.

‘Hold the fort,’ said Shaw, padding through the dunes and beginning to climb, picking a narrow ridge where the snow was just clinging to the sand and grass. At the top he pushed himself up onto an old gun emplacement, a tangle of concrete and rusted iron. The physical effort made him feel better, dissipating the stress. This high there was still a breeze, the snowflakes jostling, streamers of light like sparklers. Down on the beach he could just see the Land Rover and the spread tarpaulin.

Swinging round he looked south, to the lights of a farmhouse: a glimpse of the corrugated iron of a barn and a white spotlight illuminating a dovecote on the roof of an old stable block. They’d driven through the yard an hour earlier to get down to the beach and Shaw had noticed the name: Gallow Marsh Farm.

And then, turning inland, he saw car lights — a line of vehicles backed up behind a pine tree which was in their

Out at sea the storm clouds had unpacked themselves, revealing a wedge of clear night sky, a planetarium of lights, the moon clear of the sea. He watched the white lunar disc moving sideways along the horizon, like a prop in a child’s theatre. The silhouette of a yacht, gliding east, turned in towards the coast, an engine humming efficiently, its white sail marked with a blue clamshell.

The line of eight vehicles stood as if fashioned in icing sugar, an exquisite model on an untouched wedding cake. The moon had appeared above the scene; the snow clouds had moved on after one last heavy flurry, the stars left to stretch north over the sea towards the distant pole. The marsh birds were silent, the sluices choked with ice, and the sea, past high water, tiptoed back over the sands. Closer to the marooned cars there were sounds of life: a bass note, strands of music, the rumble of vehicle engines running heating systems. From the pick?up truck in pole position the local radio now played — a jagged tinny melody which came and went with the signal.

Three vehicles from the tail of the little convoy was an off?white Astravan. Radio 2 played, a voice inside singing along loudly, a ballad about a young girl in pursuit of an older man. Fred Parlour held the final note surprisingly well, then laughed at himself. He was handsome, mid?fifties, with a compact symmetrical face, the jaw showing no signs of slackening despite the first strands of grey at his temples. His fingernails were neatly cleaned, the overalls laundered, the hair smartly trimmed.

Beside him sat Sean Harper, the firm’s apprentice. His hair was sticky with product, cut short and spiky, his nose — pierced with a stud — was pressed up close to a pornographic magazine. ‘You’ll go blind,’ said Parlour.

A small dog — a Jack Russell — thrust its snout between the seats and nuzzled his fingers, the tongue making a liquid smack.

‘How much you reckon they got on board?’ asked Parlour, his voice friendlier. The van in front had a branded motif on the rear doors:

NORTH NORFOLK SECURITY

01553 121212

There’s safety in those numbers

Sean Harper had got out when they’d first pulled up. His mobile couldn’t find a signal so he’d run along the seaward side in the still falling snow to see if they had a radio. It was a refurbished Securicor van, but an old model, rust round the rivets. One guard in an ill?fitting uniform sat in the front, about as intimidating as a cinema usherette. Just a thumbs up: no window down. And no radio.

‘I don’t like uniforms,’ Sean had said when he got back. ‘Or the fuckers in them.’

Parlour shrugged. ‘It’s not Brinks Mat, is it?’

He got his mobile out of his breast pocket and checked the signal — one bar, but then it flickered and died. The dog sniffed at his neck so he reached back and lifted the animal onto his lap, rubbing its tummy where the fur was thinnest against the pink skin. He got a dog biscuit out of the glove compartment and fed it to her.

‘All right, Milly?’ Parlour thrust his head below the dog’s

He checked his watch: 7.40 p.m. They’d been stuck for more than two hours. Pushing open the door against the small drift on the driver’s side he let the dog slip out. The sound of the door slamming faded, absorbed by the snow, but a pair of geese rose quickly from the marsh, creaking overhead.

The air was unnaturally still, expectant, like an empty theatre.

Parlour stood and coughed in the cold, reviewing the line of vehicles. There was no echo, the snow smothering the sound, wrapping it in silence. Sean had said he’d seen a tree ahead, blocking the road, and a car skewed across the track at the rear, behind the Morris Minor which was behind them. When he’d gone forward, beyond the se curity van, he’d met another driver from further up the line, a ‘Chink’, he said, but well spoken. Sean had asked him what he thought they should do. ‘Sit tight,’ he’d said, turning away. So they’d all sat tight.

Parlour stretched in the cold and stood trying to hear the sea sigh. He edged down the side of the Morris and tapped on the window. There was no light within, and no sign of life at all. Then he saw frail fingers fumbling with the window handle, one encumbered by a large amber ring. The driver wound the window down. ‘Are we going to be here long?’ she asked, as if he were an AA man. Make?up, a savage attempt to defy the years, made her face look artificial, her eyebrows two black pencil lines, a smudge of crimson where the lips should have been. Parlour said he didn’t know how long it would be, that

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I’ve always said that.’

Milly snuffled around his shoes.

‘You’ve cut the heating?’ he asked her.

She’d looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and then, with what seemed like an effort, ‘Please. Don’t worry about me.’

He checked her fuel gauge; she had a quarter of a tank, perhaps less. ‘OK. But like I say — if you get cold we’re just in front.’

‘I’m going to sleep now…’ she said, winding up the window.

The next car was the last in the line, a Mondeo, stuck sideways across the track. Fred was leaning down to knock on the glass when the door opened with a jerk and clipped him on the forehead. He just had time to grab the frame, saving himself from a fall into the dark water and the reeds.

In the moonlight he looked at the smudge of blood on his fingers, touching the wound.

A teenager with a baseball cap got out of the car, the crotch of his jeans half?way down to his knees. He looked hot, his face flushed, a patch of sweat discolouring a T?shirt with the logo Pi is God. The rest of the fabric was covered in blue numbers. Adolescent?thin, the arms held at awkward angles, his skin clear, the narrow face dom inated by thick, dark eyebrows. Parlour didn’t notice the rapid shallow breathing and the trembling which made his hands vibrate in his pockets. Or the running shoes: Nike, 180 pounds new.

‘Don’t suppose your mobile works?’ asked Parlour. He shook his head and looked up and down the line. ‘Nope.’ The kid licked his lips. ‘What’s gonna happen then, do you think?’ Estuary English, but beneath it the subtle lilt of middle?class Blue Peter.

Parlour shrugged. ‘Guess we’ll start eating each other eventually.’

‘No.’ The kid made a noise in his throat which wasn’t a laugh. ‘You know… like, what will happen?’ The note of pleading was unmistakable; Parlour saw the boy’s eyes flooding.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Parlour, looking up at the stars. ‘Police’ll get a chopper out soon. We can’t be the only ones stuck. You got any food? Water?’ He could see a bottle of vodka on the passenger seat.

The teenager looked out over the marsh, swivelling the baseball cap down over his short, thick hair. ‘Reckon I could get through? I could stop a car down on the road. Get help.’

Parlour shook his head. ‘Best wait. If you fall in tonight you’d freeze to death. Isn’t worth it — anyway, this thing can put out enough heat to trigger global warming. So you’ll be nice and snug. How’s the fuel?’

The kid got back in the driver’s seat, looking blankly at the instrument panel, and held the steering wheel with both hands. Parlour noticed that the wheel had a cover — snakeskin, chevrons in black and white. He focused on the fuel gauge. ‘Right. That’s not so good, is it? On the red. If I was you I’d kill the lights, heat her up again and

No answer. The boy pulled the door shut.

Parlour turned away and saw a pair of green reflecting eyes out in the marsh: a fox, watching him, smelling them all, petrified by the intrusion. It blinked first, and he followed the shadow as it slunk into the snow?capped clumps of grass. Ahead he saw someone walking back down the line of cars and trucks. A woman, forty?something, in an expensive yellow all?weather sailing jacket, waving a torch.

They met by the plumbers’ van. ‘I’m in the red Alfa Romeo,’ she said. She produced a packet of cigarettes, fumbled until she got one between her lips and lit it with a gold lighter the size of a bullion bar.

‘I should tell someone,’ she said, implying that he’d have to do. ‘The old guy in the Corsa behind me — that hideous little car…’ She let the smoke circulate fully before ejecting it through her nose. ‘I think he’s dead.’

The tarpaulin over the body on the beach was now stiff with frost. Control had radioed to say the CSI unit was still an hour away, maybe more. Nothing moved on Ingol Beach except the tide, inching out. Valentine had taped off the toxic?waste drum and lit it with one of the portable floodlights, then he’d gone down on his knees, his thin trousers soaked, fingertip?searching the high?water mark.

Shaw told him he’d seen the cars trapped behind the fallen pine tree up on the track. Had the driver crashed? Did anyone need medical help? The coincidence made Shaw uneasy: the violent unnatural death on the sands, the fallen pine on Siberia Belt almost within sight. ‘OK,’ he said, refolding the map. ‘The scene’s secure. There’s only one road in and that’s blocked. We’re done here for now. We’ll leave the floodlight on. Let’s see if we’re needed on Siberia Belt.’

Valentine followed, glad to be putting distance between himself and the unseen corpse. The sight of blood made him feel the earth wasn’t solid enough to stand on. Which made him want a pack of cigarettes, which he didn’t have, so he spat in the snow instead.

They crossed the frosted sands until they reached a dyke which separated Siberia Belt from the beach, bridging it where a sluice gate stood, the cogs and levers of the

Valentine could hardly speak for lack of breath. Emphysema, thought Shaw. Fluid filling his lungs. If he’s given up smoking, he’s given up too late. Shaw didn’t need a SatNav to know Valentine’s destination.

The bass note of a stereo system thudded from behind the misted windows of the car.

‘Check it out,’ said Shaw. ‘I’ll go along the line, see what the problem is up ahead.’ A group stood beside the third car from the front of the line, lit by the interior light spilling from the open driver’s door.

Valentine bridled at the peremptory tone, trying to get used to the fact that DI Shaw was the boss, not the kid in short trousers he’d once kicked a football with on the beach. It would be easier if Shaw could lay off the checklist philosophy. That’s what they called him at the station. ‘Check?It.’ Check this, check that, check every bloody thing. Mr Politically Correct. Mr Rule Book. And Valentine knew where all that had its roots. He knew why Peter Shaw was so keen to show the world he was the perfect copper: it was because his father hadn’t been, that’s why. And because his father’s partner hadn’t been either. Jack Shaw and George Valentine had lashed up their last big case. Big time. What had the judge said? Slipshod.

Shaw reached the Morris Minor and turned back with fresh instructions: ‘And this,’ he called. He placed his palms together and put them beside one cheek, tilting his head as if laying it down on a pillow. An elderly woman was asleep in the car, the windows slightly frosted on the inside, a tartan rug to one side where it had slipped off her body. Shaw could see her face: there was a smile on the thin lips and her hands were held slightly up from the quilt like a child’s.

The door of the Mondeo opened before Valentine could tap on the roof. The teenager stood, leaning on the door. ‘We getting out of here?’

Valentine shrugged. ‘What’s up?’ He nodded forward to the group by the silver Vauxhall Corsa.

‘What bastard cares?’ The young man bounced on his toes and Valentine noticed that he kept putting his hands in his pockets and then taking them out, then rubbing them on the backside of his jeans.

‘This one.’ Valentine flipped out his warrant card. ‘Why are you on this road, sir, can I ask?’

The kid took a step back and laughed inappropriately. ‘Diversion. There’s a sign down on the coast road — floods it said.’ His accent had flattened out: he’d gone up three socio?economic classes and moved thirty miles closer to London. He looked ahead. ‘Then this happened.’ He put his hand on the car door and then quickly removed it as if the metal were too cold to touch, but Valentine had

On the dashboard lay a mobile phone.

‘Yours?’

‘Shine,’ said the kid. ‘Two megapixel camera; hundred and fifteen grams; six point seven hours talk time.’

‘Right. But does it work?’

The kid shrugged. ‘I was gonna walk back to the road,’ he said.

Valentine shook his head. ‘A mile, and it’s treacherous.’

‘It’s one point three miles,’ he said. ‘I clocked it.’

‘Just stay here, OK?’ Valentine was running out of patience. ‘We’ve radioed for help but it’ll be a time.’ He took an extra breath and ran an eye over the Mondeo’s purple paintwork — spotless. On the back seat was a blanket, a picnic basket, a shooting stick and a Frisbee. The steering wheel had a cover, black and white chevrons: an animal skin, snake perhaps. He walked on, but turned and memorized the registration number. He had a good memory, if he could be bothered to use it. The kid had annoyed him. It always did: a teenager out in Daddy’s car.

Shaw was behind the plumber’s van now, and through the heated rear window and the grille he’d seen a young man in the passenger seat reading a magazine. He came alongside, noticing for the first time the paw prints in the snow between the footprints, and tapped on the driver’s window, then opened the door.

‘Police,’ he said, putting his knee on the driver’s seat

‘Name?’ said Shaw.

The man shrugged. ‘Das Fleisch,’ he said, mangling the words. ‘They got Turkish blokes on site, they bring them in from Frankfurt.’

‘Your name.’

‘I found it, the last job this morning. Building site down in the Arndale, in the Portakabin where I brewed the tea. There was loads. Worse…’

Shaw waited. He studied the young man’s face. Noted the premature hair loss at the temples, the acne scars, and the pronounced dimple in the chin — the mental fovea.

‘Sean Harper. That’s my boss,’ said the young man, nodding forward to the group standing in the pool of light. ‘Fred.’ He grinned as if this was the ultimate character reference.

‘I’ll keep this, Mr Harper,’ said Shaw, folding the magazine inside his jacket.

‘Like — it’s not a crime.’

‘Well, it is actually,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

‘You go out?’ asked Harper, pointing at the RNLI lifeboat motif on the lapel of Shaw’s jacket, trying hard to smile.

‘Yup.’

‘That’s cool,’ said Harper, watching his magazine disappear from sight. ‘I’ve thought of it… you know? Volunteering.’

‘You should,’ said Shaw, not smiling.

Next in line was the revamped Securicor van. The driver refused to open the window until he saw the warrant card pressed up against the glass, then he cracked it an inch.

‘Any trouble?’ asked Shaw, knowing he’d seen the man before — in the dock of the magistrates’ court. The crime? He searched his memory but couldn’t pinpoint the case. Something violent, he knew that. Something violent with his hands, in pursuit of cash. Why then, Shaw asked himself, was he sitting guarding a van full of the stuff? He was twenty?five to thirty, dark good looks marred by a narrow nose which had been broken and badly reset and which only just managed to separate his eyes, the eyebrows almost meeting at the bridge. He had a halfhearted moustache and designer stubble.

‘You got a control desk to contact?’ asked Shaw.

The driver found his voice. ‘We don’t have radios — and there’s no signal on the mobiles.’

Shaw stepped back, looking along the line of vehicles. ‘Get my DS to radio through for you — there’s enough chaos after the storm without half the force out looking for you and your bars of gold. What is in the back?’

The guard checked a clipboard. ‘Cash. We do corner shops, the supermarkets on the estates, wholesale fish

‘Sit tight,’ said Shaw, wondering if his employer knew about the criminal record. He approved of rehabilitation, but putting the alcoholic behind the bar was asking for trouble.

Ahead he could see the Corsa’s two nearside doors open, two figures standing back, watching Shaw. One, a man in overalls, waved and placed a hand on his heart, patting a quilted jacket. Shaw raised a hand.

‘Problem?’ he shouted.

The man pointed inside the Corsa, patted his chest again. ‘Heart.’

He moved quickly past the next car — a Volvo, an old model estate, a hand?painted sign reading ‘The Emerald Garden’ on the rear window. The distinctive aroma of soy sauce was laced with petrol fumes. No driver, no passengers.

An elderly man lay tilted back in the Corsa’s front seat. Shaw guessed he was sixty?five, perhaps seventy. He had heavy spectacles, with black plastic rims, and thin white hair stuck to his skull. His face was the colour of the streaks in Stilton cheese, saliva catching the light at the corners of his mouth. Vomit covered his chin and the front of the heavy jacket, a slimy eggshell?blue. Shaw picked up the strong scent of pine needles but couldn’t see the air freshener.

A woman in a yellow jacket stood back, smoking. Kneeling, the man in clean blue overalls held the sick man’s hand, his neat face screwed up with anxiety, a small wound on his forehead still wet with blood. A Jack Russell

‘Like I say, heart attack, I reckon,’ said the man in the overalls. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a mobile signal? You stuck too?’

‘I’m a policeman,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ve radioed. Can I see, please?’

He bent down and found that another man was on the passenger seat. Chinese features, his knees drawn up beneath him. ‘Can’t find a pulse,’ he said, the consonants dulled by his accent.

Shaw took out a pocket knife and cut the tie which had become fiercely knotted at the man’s throat. Then he pulled both sides of his heavy oversized jacket and shirt apart, the buttons popping clear. He turned the collar away from the neck and noticed a name tag: RFA. He leant in close to the man’s face, putting a hand to his forehead. He knew instantly that the man was alive: the drops of water in his eyebrows were warm, and although his lips were blue and didn’t move they were moist with the breath that was passing between them, like the draught under a door.

He backed out and shouted to Valentine, who was down on his haunches by the Morris, talking through the driver’s window.

‘George,’ he shouted. Valentine stood slowly, one hand on the Morris for support. ‘Get a chopper. Medical emergency — cardiac arrest, male about sixty?five years of age. They’ll see us from the air, tell ’em to come down on the seaward side — it’s flat sand under the snow.’

Shaw ducked back into the Corsa and, feeling inside

The man on the passenger seat said he was called Stanley Zhao. Even folded on his knees Shaw could see he bucked the racial stereotype by being the best part of six feet tall. He looked fifty, but his hair was still as black as a penguin’s feathers. Shaw told him to stay in the Corsa, run the heating at half blast and sound the horn if Holt came round or got worse.

Shaw shut the door and straightened his back, bringing his face up level with the roof rack, the two sets of ladders strapped up neatly with webbing. The woman in the yellow coat and the man in the blue overalls stood between him and the first two vehicles in the convoy.

‘My name’s Baker?Sibley; Sarah Baker?Sibley,’ said the woman. ‘I need to get a message to my daughter. I should have picked her up from school — St Agnes’ Hall — and I’m worried. I’m always there on time — or I ring. She won’t have Clara with her — that’s her best friend. She has a clarinet lesson after school,’ she added. ‘She’ll walk home. She’ll try to walk. Two miles, she’s done it before and she has a key, but never in winter… in this,’ she said, looking out over the snowfield. ‘She’s thirteen. So she won’t think twice about trying.’ She laughed, then dropped the half?finished cigarette and fumbled for the packet. ‘I’m sorry — can I see your warrant card again?’

‘This your Alfa?’ Shaw asked her, walking forward. ‘I’d stay put for now,’ he added when she didn’t answer. ‘And the vehicle in front?’

‘The man who’s ill went forward and checked when we first got stuck,’ she said. ‘The driver hasn’t been out. Perhaps he’s getting some sleep; he had some horrendous racket at full blast to start with.’

The radio still played, but the volume was now low, the sound reedy.

Looking forward along the causeway Shaw could see an unsteady line of footprints weaving its way to the pick?up truck beside partially filled tyre tracks, the return line an uncertain attempt to retrace the same steps. Paw prints, crisper, zig?zagged between the tracks. The observation window in the rear of the cab still showed a light within. The pick?up’s headlights burnt yellow, and Shaw guessed the battery was low. He walked forward, the hair on his neck bristling as a breeze took his skin temperature down a degree. Something moved in the sky and he looked up in time to see a meteor fall, a flashing line of silver that died before it reached the sea.

The truck was wide enough to block the track almost completely, leaving just the narrowest of paths down the driver’s side. Shaw held on to the side and took the chance to lift the tarpaulin cover to see the load beneath: plasterboard, sheets of it for cheap walls.

Leaning forward he grasped the door handle, breaking the silence with his voice for the first time.

He turned the handle and swung the door open, stepping forward quickly to get a grip on the stanchion. He was less than two feet from the driver and it took him three seconds, perhaps less, to know that he was looking at a corpse.

The sight of death. For Shaw the shock was no less profound for being the second time he’d faced it in a few hours. If anything the sudden sense of living in a slow?motion world was even more pronounced. He felt his fingertips tingle as the blood rushed to his heart.

‘Crime scene,’ he said to himself, reassured by the calm resonance of his own voice. ‘Let’s stick to the book. He’s dead, so there’s no hurry, no imperative but observation.’ He stood outside himself, watching himself follow procedure. His voice sounded good. Very good. But despite the sensation that he’d taken control a persistent thought intruded, like the buzzing of a fly around a wound: what would his father have done? An odd sensation: missing someone who’d hardly been there.

‘Don’t look for links,’ he told himself, thinking of the body still freezing under the Land Rover’s spotlight down on Ingol Beach. ‘Let’s take them one at a time.’

He looked at his hands, checking. ‘Gloves,’ he said, double?checking.

The radio signal was weak, the volume hardly audible now, but he leant in none the less and turned the radio off, leaving himself some silence in which to think.

His training had been repetitive but clear: there were procedures to follow, and a single broken rule could destroy vital evidence.

‘George.’ He said it as calmly as he could, but Valentine was experienced enough to pick up the coded charge of adrenaline. He looked up sharply. ‘Make sure everyone stays put. And get that dog on a leash. Crime?scene rules. Then come forward — to the Alfa. Wait for me there.’

Now, observations. The corpse. First, the face. From a kneeling position Shaw could look up at the victim, the chin resting on the chest, a pair of off?white workman’s overalls buttoned high with a white T?shirt beneath. The skull was slight, almost child?like. The features — eyes, lips and eyebrows — were large and seemed to crowd the face. The nose was small, snub and under?developed. He checked the skin at the ankles and hands. Hypostasis, the telltale pooling of blood after death, was incomplete. The man was small — a guess, five foot six or seven.

The cause of death was brutally obvious: a thin?necked chisel projected from the dead man’s left eye socket. Shaw touched his own wounded eye, feeling his pulse in the blood behind the retina. The chisel had been forced in up to the hilt of the rounded wooden handle. There was remarkably little blood, but blood there was: a rivulet, now congealed, ran from the caked eye socket across the cheek to the neck and shoulder, and then behind the body, pooling on the seat. Rigor had begun to set in; both hands were held palm up, showing signs of soil stains, one with grass under the fingernails, fingers stiff. The head was bare, the close?cropped cranium vulnerable, but unmarked.

Immediate environment. He smelt the air. Heated over a period of hours, it was heavy with aromas: an acrid hint of something earthy, possibly urine, and from the engine the smell of hot plastic and warm oil. Alcohol too, sweet as death. The dashboard held a half?eaten apple, the exposed flesh already brown, and a can of Carlsberg Special Brew. The wrapping paper from a packet of Hula Hoops was in the ashtray, which was ashless. The passenger seat was obscured by a large toolbox: metal, blue and worn, with fold?back wing lids. Hanging from the rear?view mirror was a picture of three children: two boys holding a toddler, crammed into a photo booth. One of the boys had a shaven skull, the smile uncertain, the bone structure poking through translucent skin. From a suction hook in the roof hung a little plastic model of a bald eagle, which moved very slightly as Shaw’s weight tipped the suspension a few inches. Kneeling, he saw that a key ring hung from the ignition, a leather fob, with gold lettering. Three words: Jake Ellis Appeal.

He stood, feeling that he’d gained firm control of the scene, the tension beginning to ebb from his neck muscles. A run through the snow would ease the stress that was making his head ache, but he knew he’d have to wait. He looked back down the line of cars. Valentine stood beside the Alfa Romeo, motionless except for the rhythmic rise

Between them were three lines of human footprints — John Blickling Holt’s round trip and Shaw’s one way. Holt’s prints were still sharp, although partly filled with the snow that had fallen after the convoy had come to rest, and by the breeze which had blown flakes over the bank from the beach beyond. But they were still clear; unmissable. To the landward side the saltmarsh was dominated by sheets of black water, dotted with clumps of marram grass. There was no sign that anyone had tried to climb the bank, or drop down into the water. To the seaward side there was the dyke, six feet across, eight deep, and beyond that the snow?covered sands, unmarked except for the delicate herringbone footsteps of the marsh birds.

Which left forwards. The lights of the truck were still on and lit the fallen pine a pale yellow. There was a six?foot gap of untouched snow between the pick?up and the tree.

Shaw took a deep breath. Even the perfect murderer leaves footprints in snow. Suicide? Hardly. Stabbing yourself through the eye was not an obvious way to leave the world. Self?mutilation? Martyrdom? A message left for the living?

Shaw breathed out, watching the plume of steam hang in the air like an accusation, his knee jiggling as he tried to think. What if the temperature rose? If the snow melted he’d lose the evidence; his crime scene would disappear.

He needed fresh eyes, even if they were hooded.

‘OK, George,’ he called back. ‘Follow my tracks.’ Valentine struggled to match Shaw’s confident strides in

‘Fuck,’ he said, unable to stop the recoil in his neck muscles at the sight of the victim.

‘Indeed, George. Fuck it is. Let’s take it carefully, shall we?’

Valentine sniffed and looked away. His guts began to contract rhythmically, his mouth flooding with saliva. But he fought the urge to vomit again, biting the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

Shaw retrieved a small voice recorder from his pocket, checked it was working and pressed the record button. A pinprick amber light glowed.

‘DI Peter Shaw. Monday, 9th of February 2009. Eight thirteen p.m. I’m standing beside a pick?up truck. Make and registration…’

Valentine worked his way carefully to the rear of the truck. ‘It’s a Vauxhall Rascal,’ he said. ‘Ten years old — more.’ The licence plate was clear of snow and he read out the number, his voice sharp and discordant in the still air.

Shaw went on, his breath making the hand?held recorder damp. ‘The driver of the vehicle is dead. Cause of death appears to be a violent stab wound to the face which has penetrated the left eye socket. The weapon used was a chisel with a wooden, worn handle. The vehicle is first in a line of eight stranded on Siberia Belt, Ingol Beach. Six feet in front of it is a fallen tree. Before I approached the pick?up the only footprints in the snow to the rear were those of John Blickling Holt, one of the other drivers, who walked forward shortly after the convoy became stranded,

Valentine looked back into the headlights of the Alfa Romeo, along the bank above the star?studded water of the marsh, and ahead to the fallen tree.

‘Check the other side,’ said Shaw, handing him a heavy?duty torch.

Valentine stepped across the rear of the truck, noting a pool of urine staining the snow by the nearside rear wheel arch, paw prints scattered nearby. Immediately below him was the deep gash of the dyke ditch. Looking back along the line of traffic he could see that after about eighty yards the ditch disappeared into a brick culvert which ran into a sluice gate — the point at which they’d crossed over from the sands. The snow over the top of the sluice and around it had been untouched when they’d climbed across. The bank on the far side of the truck was a sinuous sheet of silver white, with no sign of disturbance.

He edged back. ‘Nothing — no one’s been in or out.’ Shaw clicked the recorder and held it to Valentine’s face. ‘For the record,’ he said.

Valentine’s hooded eyes opened a few millimetres beyond normal. He’d never quite got used to taking orders from people twenty years younger than he was. He’d been a DI himself until they’d busted him after Jack Shaw’s last case, and he’d been to more crime scenes than Peter Shaw had been to university lectures.

Shaw cut the recording and looked Valentine in the eyes. He thought for the first time that he might have underestimated him, and he reminded himself that trust was not one of his strong suits. So he made himself ask the question. ‘What do you think?’

Valentine wasn’t a whiz, and he certainly wasn’t a kid, but the job ran as deep in his veins as it did in Peter Shaw’s. It wasn’t that he couldn’t analyse a crime scene. He’d done it a thousand times. He just trusted his instinct more than a fat textbook of procedural logic. So what did instinct tell him now?

‘It’s two crimes,’ he said. ‘This killing’s vicious, angry, unplanned. But signs of entry and exit are non?existent. The killer just vanishes, coolly.’ He took a breath, looking towards the sea. ‘And then there’s the other corpse — down on the beach. Two hundred yards away, a bit more. Where does that fit in?’ He squatted down, looking under the truck. Nothing. ‘He could have jumped, from the cab here, into the marsh…’

Shaw looked unimpressed, although he didn’t have a better scenario. ‘Why? Why risk drowning, or freezing to death, just to avoid leaving a footprint? And the splash would have caught someone’s attention.’

Valentine’s jaw began to vibrate with the cold.

‘We need pictures,’ said Shaw.

Valentine shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Tom’s boys from CSI?’ he asked. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘Well. Two reasons, I guess,’ said Shaw, talking to himself

Valentine buttoned the top of his raincoat. He’d been out of serious front?line policing for a decade and was honest enough to know he needed to sharpen up his act. Shaw was right in his summary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.

From his pocket Shaw produced a small digital camera.

‘Not admissible,’ said Valentine, before he could stop himself. All specialist forensic photography was on film, reducing any chance of digital enhancement. No court would accept a digital image.

‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw, failing to suppress his irritation at being picked up by his own DS. ‘But we need a record,’ he added. ‘Even if we can’t take it into court. I’ll get what shots I can… Meanwhile get Control. Tell ’em what we’ve got. We’re getting CSI anyway for the victim on the beach — and the pathologist — but we need back?up. More bodies in uniforms. We need transport for the witnesses, and somewhere we can take them for the paperwork. We need statements, names, addresses, the lot.

‘Somewhere warm…’ said Valentine, taking a breath, ‘would be nice.’

Shaw looked along the coast towards the lights he’d seen from the beach. ‘Tell ’em to try Gallow Marsh Farm. If they’ve got a barn we could use that, but the unit will have to bring some air heaters. And we need a catering unit.’

He patted his jacket pockets. ‘What have I missed?’ There were times, thought Valentine, when Shaw looked like his father. Something in the face, but something subtle, the way he seemed to focus on the mid?distance when he was thinking. Valentine leant in the driver’s window, looking around the tomb that the truck cab had become, trying not to glimpse the victim’s face. The side pocket in the driver’s door was empty except for a single piece of neatly folded paper. Valentine lifted it clear with his gloved fingers. It was an invoice. Beneath it was a pair of spark plugs. He leant in closer, and sniffed.

‘Old plugs,’ he said.

‘So?’ said Shaw.

‘Rusted. Plugs don’t rust in situ,’ explained Valentine. ‘Too much oil about. If they’d been taken out recently they’d give off that burnt smell… but there’s nothing.’ He pointed at the tiny question mark of the contact points. Dull metal, a blush of oxidized steel.

The pick?up’s engine still ran, the heating system clattering.

‘So he took them out, left them there, they rusted. What’s the problem?’ asked Shaw. But he knew that wasn’t

Then two things happened at the same time. They heard the first flutter of the helicopter blades along the coast. Within seconds it was with them, hanging in the air with the stars, an RAF Coastal Rescue, the bay doors open to reveal two men in full flight gear and crash helmets. The pilot brought it down to thirty feet and then began to edge closer, trying to find a spot as close to the dyke ditch as he could get without losing his safety margin. The snow began to rise about them.

And as Shaw turned away, looking down the line of cars, he saw the teenager in the baseball cap crawling back up the bank from the marsh. He reached the top, then stood and broke into a run. Shaw watched him for twenty yards before he slipped again, almost down into the ditch on the far side. He knelt for a few seconds, looking back at the cars, and Shaw guessed he was considering a return to the warmth of the Mondeo. But instead he turned away and began to run, into the half?light first, and then into the night itself.

Gallow Marsh Farm lay sunk in the snow, as if the weight on the roof had pushed it down into the damp sandy soil. Firelight flickered in the Georgian windows of the old kitchen. Inside, Shaw and Valentine sat at a plain deal table, the statements of the six witnesses left at the scene spread out in neat piles. Attached to each was a set of CSI pictures of their vehicles; interior and exterior, plus a set of Polaroid shots of each witness. Black and white prints; Shaw always insisted on that, so that he could study the faces in stark relief. Across the hallway the living room had been set aside for the witnesses, a nervous, over?excited party, each now dressed in the plain white SOC suits they had been allocated while their own clothes were taken for forensic examination in Lynn.

The mobile police canteen, parked in the farmyard, had produced coffee, tea and soup, hot dogs and cake. The farmer’s wife had donated a bottle of Johnnie Walker and what was left of the Christmas store of Gordon’s gin. A small bowl of dog food had been supplied for the Jack Russell, which had been shut in a utility room behind the kitchen. A uniformed PC stayed with the witnesses to make sure the conversation did not include any discussion of the events of the evening so far.

A cheap wooden 1930s clock on the windowsill read 11.30 p.m. The kitchen was an odd amalgam of two ages:

Shaw took the limpet shells from his pocket and laid eight in a line, returning two to his pocket. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Eight vehicles. First in line the victim — no name as yet. Pathologist is with the body on site.’ He felt the familiar thrill of the hunt, the intellectual buzz of the unsolved puzzle. In the silence he could hear Valentine’s watch ticking.

‘Second in line…’ He looked at the statement. ‘Sarah Baker?Sibley in the Alfa Romeo.’

‘Posh bitch,’ said Valentine.

‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw. ‘Least we know who we’re talking about. Third. The Corsa. John Holt — latest?’

Valentine had radioed the Queen Victoria hospital on the half hour since the helicopter had left Ingol Beach.

‘The hospital says he’s comfortable — comfortable for someone who’s had a heart attack.’ Valentine shook his head, trying to fight off the tiredness that was making his bones drag him down. ‘DC Campbell’s with him — if he talks, she’ll shout, but she says he’s drugged up to the eyeballs. Wife’s with him too.’

‘Right. Fourth vehicle — the Volvo. Stanley Zhao of the That’s one takeaway dinner that won’t get delivered. Fifth. North Norfolk Security. His statement’s clear enough. But I’ve seen him somewhere, and he’s seen me. Criminal record — I’m sure of it. Let’s check that first thing. Name again?’

‘Shreeves,’ said Valentine. ‘Jonah Shreeves.’ He hadn’t checked the statement, and Shaw wondered if he’d committed all the names to memory.

‘Next?’

‘Express Plumbers. Fred Parlour and Sean Harper.’

‘Parlour’s head wound — we need to check that, double?check it.’

Valentine took an extra breath. Shaw shuffled papers. ‘Then the old dear in the Morris, Cynthia Pryce, and eighth the Mondeo. That’s a full house.’

Shaw stood up and moved over to the window. His eye throbbed beneath the dressing. The farmyard was packed with vehicles: the mobile canteen, the CSI mobile lab, the diving unit’s van and back?up, two squad cars, and the police bus which had ferried out a steady stream of uniformed officers for the fingertip search of the beach. The yard, the snow untouched when they’d picked their way in, was now a weave of frozen tracks, and jagged ruptured ice. On the far side was the old stable block in brick with the wooden dovecote lit a harsh aluminium white on the pitched roof.

Valentine looked at his Rolex, annoyed that the second hand had suddenly started moving. ‘They’re sending out taxis for the witnesses, we’ll start letting them go home.’ He managed to squeeze in an extra breath: ‘Soon.’

‘We’ve double?checked IDs for the lot?’

‘Unless the dog’s really a Great Dane,’ said Shaw, pacing the cork?tiled floor, as reluctant as ever to take a chair, his joints screaming for the release of exercise.

The door opened and the farmer’s wife, Isabel Dereham, came in, stamping on the flagged floor. She was in her mid?thirties and slight, but she hauled another plastic basket’s worth of dirty clothes in front of the washing machine with no apparent effort. Her arms and hands were suntanned, the tendons taut and strong. The sleepless nights, the hard physical work, the stress of running a farm were all in her face. And a restless energy, so that she didn’t look at home in her own kitchen. But there was something else too, and it wasn’t far from beauty. She flexed her wrists, relieving a pain, and smiled, the line of her lips slightly crooked. Shaw noticed that the upper and lower edges of her lips were marked by a natural red line: a textbook example of the vermilion border.

‘More coffee?’ she asked, pushing mousey hair off her forehead.

‘I’m sorry — we’re in the way, Mrs Dereham,’ said Shaw.

‘Well — yes. Yes you are, Inspector.’ She kicked the empty washing basket. ‘But I guess you’d rather be at home…’ She put her hands on her head, closing her eyes, resting, and Shaw watched her breasts rise under the rough shirt she wore. Beautiful? Yes: the body beneath unhidden despite the clothes. ‘It’s Izzy, by the way.’

‘Look. I have to get down to the beach,’ she said. ‘The oyster beds; the storm will have rocked the cages. Oysters are money, Inspector, big money. Unfortunately, I just manage them. But I do need to check. Is that OK?’

‘Sure. Just keep off Ingol Beach.’

‘My daughter’s asleep upstairs. Natalie. I’ve explained you’re here. She won’t be a problem.’

When she left the cold air blew in, making the fire crackle.

They checked their mobiles on the tabletop, the signal bars blank.

‘So what happened on Siberia Belt tonight?’ asked Shaw.

It was a rhetorical question, but Valentine didn’t spot it. He checked his notes. ‘The first squad car up Siberia Belt said there was no trace of the detour sign that all of the drivers swear was on the corner when they left the main road. The diving unit back?up came from Cromer to the other end of Siberia Belt and there was no sign at that end either. But the junction’s opposite a cottage and the owner swears he saw a no?entry sign there at around the right time, but he didn’t see it put up, or taken down. So that’s it — diversion at one end, no entry at the other, then both disappear.’

‘What about the AA?’ asked Shaw.

‘Nope. Same with County Highways, RAC, traffic control. No one put a sign out.’

Shaw poured more coffee. ‘So it’s a trap for the victim. They get him off the road, he never gets where he’s going — unless it was the cemetery, of course.’ He looked into

‘There’s one thing that works,’ said Valentine. ‘Holt. The old bloke in the Corsa. He goes forward. How long does it take? A single blow, then he leaves him to bleed to death.’

‘Where’s the murder weapon?’

‘In the coat — it’s big enough.’

‘True. He could have had an accomplice under it, and a getaway car. But the Baker?Sibley woman’s statement is clear — he kept his hands in his pockets. He didn’t lean in. She watched him.’

‘She could be wrong.’ Valentine shrugged. ‘Maybe she looked away, it only takes a second. Then chummy bleeds to death — slowly. Death throes, that’s what you saw from the hill, what she saw through the back window.’

Shaw undid the top button of his shirt — he never wore a tie. ‘But there’s a plan. We know someone put out the signs, then took them back in. Meticulous, premeditated. Then the killer takes a chance like that? That the witnesses are looking the other way when he strikes? Makes no sense.’

‘I’m just saying it’s all that works,’ said Valentine, his jaw set.

‘It is. Which is another good reason for keeping a round?the?clock watch at Holt’s bedside — so fix it. But let’s not get too excited. There’s no trace of blood on Holt. Not a drop. However, he is the last person to see the victim alive, so we need to interview him as quickly as possible. We’ll start the spade work in the morning,’ added Shaw. ‘We need to re?interview them all — check

Valentine tipped back the coffee cup, letting the last gritty granules fire up the taste buds on his tongue. ‘The runaway kid. Why run? And why run then? St James’s is on to the Mondeo’s registration — should be an hour, less.’

‘But he’s not a killer, is he?’

Valentine stretched his arms aloft, the joints cracking. ‘We won’t get anything tonight.’ Shaw stood. ‘Let’s touch base first thing. We’ll need to come back in daylight anyway — I’ve told them to keep the vehicles in situ until then. But the fact is that even by daylight the problem is still the same: we’ve got a murder scene with no footprints in and no footprints out.’

Valentine flapped his raincoat in front of the fire. ‘Let’s find a motive. Worry about footprints in the snow later…’

There was a silence again. Shaw remembered something his father had said about George Valentine. That when it came to the textbook he worked backwards: he found the criminal first, then the evidence which linked them to the crime. Had there been an unspoken inference: that if he couldn’t find the evidence, he’d make it up?

‘Right — anyone else?’ asked Shaw.

Valentine rubbed the pouched skin below his eyes. ‘The Chinky in the takeaway Volvo?’

Shaw winced at the casual racism, wondering if Valentine had said it deliberately. As far as his DS was concerned PC was something you stuck on your desk and didn’t want to use.

Shaw went to speak.

‘Perhaps they’ve got something going, the Chinese… people smuggling?’ Valentine continued.

Shaw shook his head. ‘One guy on a raft and he’s European. We had illegals coming in last year, but the trade’s dried up since the Coastguard started patrolling the Wash. That’s stopped it — and stopped it dead.’

‘OK,’ said Valentine. ‘Ciggies, then; drugs? We don’t know what the bloke on the beach might have had in that raft before he died. So there’s a welcoming party, one of the cars that’s stranded on Siberia Belt. Just because there’s a detour sign doesn’t mean none of them wanted to be there.’

Shaw was listening now.

‘So they get snarled up in the snow,’ said Valentine. ‘An argument about what to do. Low life, falling out. Do we stay, do we run? Who’s got the money?’ He stopped, hauling up his ribs to draw air into his lungs. ‘Do we get paid? We know the score with these people. It’s all sweetness and light until the shit flies, then they tear each other apart. Someone gets the chisel for their trouble.’

Shaw’s back stiffened. ‘And then the murderer disappears without leaving a footprint. How does that work?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Valentine, checking his watch.

Two doors led out of the kitchen. One into the hall and to the living room beyond, the other into a makeshift office. They could hear a woman’s voice: Sarah Baker?Sibley. Each witness had been offered one call on the landline, and they could hear her talking; the speech pattern oddly modulated, tiredness perhaps, blended with stress. Valentine had got a message through to her daughter’s voicemail via the control room at St James’s while they were out on Siberia Belt. Three messages, in fact: stay at home; check the security lights were on; pizza in the fridge.

‘God,’ they heard her say, stressed out. ‘OK, OK. Look, pass me over…’

They heard the phone go down on the hook suddenly so Valentine opened the door to usher her back to the living room. But she’d picked up the phone again. ‘I’m sorry — we got cut off. Do you mind?… I need to ring again.’ She was desperate, and Shaw knew that no one could have stopped her making a second call. The tyranny of children.

Valentine shrugged. ‘Then the car’s ready, OK? You’ll be home in twenty minutes,’ he said, closing the door.

Shaw pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the kitchen window. A line of taxis was edging through the farmyard gates.

They heard footsteps on ice outside the door. It was Izzy Dereham, back from checking the oyster beds. ‘Storm’s turned a couple of the frames,’ she said, walking briskly to the sink, scrubbing her hands.

‘Sure. We run the oysters in it.’

‘Where?’ pressed Valentine.

‘Shark Tooth.’ It was one of the town’s newest com panies, commercial shellfish mainly, having started out running boats for tourists to catch North Sea dogfish, based up the coast from Lynn at Wootton Marsh.

‘They own this place,’ said Dereham. ‘I’m just a tenant. But you know, I’ve got plans…’ She looked up to where her child was sleeping. ‘Bit of arable, dairy herd, it could be a decent farm this… but the quick money’s in the oysters.’

‘Your husband?’ asked Shaw, knowing instantly it was the right question.

‘Patrick died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Shaw touched the picture over the fireplace taken on a farm. Something crossed Izzy’s face, an expression so fleeting as to be subliminal. Grief thought Shaw, and something else, expertly hidden.

‘I was born there — up the coast,’ she said. ‘That was our farm, before the bailiffs moved in.’

The door to the back room opened and Sarah Baker?Sibley came through. She was going to say something but the phone rang behind her. Valentine went through to answer.

‘I’ve finished,’ she announced, and Shaw noticed the hard edge to her voice. ‘My daughter’s at home, she’s fine.’ She tried to look relieved but didn’t get her face right. Shaw wondered what was wrong. ‘Thank you,’ she added, slipping out under cover of a smile.

It was late and Shaw was tired, almost too tired to let the thought take shape. Valentine shuffled the papers on the kitchen table, looking at the CSI pictures, setting apart the shots of the Mondeo. A stolen car, so they might never find the young driver.

‘Thought so,’ said Valentine, spinning one of the CSI prints round so that Shaw could see. It was an interior shot of the Mondeo. ‘The kid does a runner,’ he said, his voice suddenly animated. ‘Panics when he knows we’ll nab him for the theft. But he makes sure he takes something with him…’

‘What?’ asked Shaw.

‘A snakeskin steering?wheel cover. Chevrons, black and white. Distinctive.’ He pressed a stubby finger into the shot, leaving a greasy print.

The cobblestones along St James’s glistened like pebbles on the beach. Police HQ was a curved brick 1960s block with civic pretensions, the single Victorian blue lamp salvaged from its predecessor down in the old town. The snow was turning to sleet, then rain, sheets of it thrown in off the sea falling through the floodlight that still played on Greyfriars Tower, a medieval stump which stood in waste ground opposite St James’s. Under the styleless portico of police headquarters, held up by four square brick pillars, two uniformed constables manhandled a half?naked youth towards the doors, the young man’s knotted back a riot of illustration: an anchor, a dancing girl, a military badge.

Valentine sniffed the pungent kick of meths on the night breeze and walked down towards the quay. He’d got a lift back into town with a CSI unit, and the trip had woken him up. The pub sign outside his local, the Artichoke, swung in the rain, no lights within. He stood for a moment beside Captain George Vancouver’s statue on the waterside. This was where he’d always had a cigarette, the last one before home. He took a double lungful of night air, his shoulders aching with the effort. A day without cigarettes had left him feeling no better, no worse.

He considered the bronze statue, wondering what the

Staring into the mud, he thought about the old girl in the Morris in the line of cars on Siberia Belt. Nice woman, old money. He’d helped her out of the car and then she said she’d forgotten her glasses. He offered to get them out of the glove compartment but she’d said not to bother, her voice edging just too high to be natural. They’d take her car into the pound tomorrow, so there was no hurry. He’d find out what she didn’t want him to see. And one other thing that kept snagging his brain. The ladders on the Corsa’s roof. He’d get the CSI report on those. Check the length.

He walked over the narrow wooden footbridge which crossed the Purfleet and made his way along the King’s Staithe to the maze of terraced streets he’d lived in all his life. He stopped on the corner of Greenland Street. The central heating at home would be off. He hadn’t understood the timing mechanism when his wife was alive, and the secret had died with her. She’d been buried in the churchyard at All Saints’ and sometimes he went by on the way home. Not tonight. A cat sat in the middle of the road like a fur hat, its eyes as green as the paper dragon set in the fanlight of the end house: once a shop, its downstairs window curved around the corner gracefully, a door set within the arc. Behind the glass a handwritten sign in Chinese characters.

He knew the sound they made. Yat ye hoi p’i.

Here, on the corner of a rain?soaked street, a warm