Death Wore White

5

Friday, 13 February

Andrew John Lufkin was arrested at 6.15 a.m. in his bedsit above Josie’s International Hair Salon — a lock?up on the Greyfriars Estate. The backstairs entrance reeked of singed hair and cheap scent. DS Valentine stood back as they took out the door with a shoulder ram, the splinters flying as they pushed through into the bedroom. Lufkin was naked, on top of the sheets, the room heavy with the smell of a paraffin heater and the salty tang of sex.

Shaw couldn’t help thinking he looked a lot cleaner than he’d expected. His skin was slightly pink, shiny, and tussling with the fumes from the heater was something else: pine, perhaps? Lufkin asked to see the warrant, not bothering to pull the sheet across his genitals. The girl was in the bathroom. She came out wrapped in a towel, a cigarette unlit between red glossed lips.

‘Suzi,’ said Valentine, recognizing one of the women who worked the docks, based in a sauna off the quayside. That was the smell, cedar wood, splashed with scented water. ‘I’d get your stuff; this one’s done.’

‘He’s paid up ’til lunchtime,’ she said, genuinely affronted on behalf of her client’s rights.

They ran her back into town in a squad car while Lufkin dressed.

All the clothes in the flat above the shop were new — brand new, newer. Boxer shorts, socks and T?shirts still held the creases from the shop packaging which filled the kitchen bin. M amp;S receipts, also in the bin, put the date of purchase as the previous Tuesday. Three pairs of jeans — identical — and a waterproof jacket hung in the wardrobe. They may have been worn once. But Lufkin’s watch had a green army?style corded strap, a dark stain by the buckle. A single CSI officer had accompanied them on the raid. The watch strap was bagged and dispatched to the Ark with him.

‘What’s this about?’ said Lufkin, pulling a T?shirt over his head. But it wasn’t a question, just part of a ritual.

‘Let’s save the questions for the station, Mr Lufkin,’ said Shaw. Tom Hadden’s early morning report from the Skolt was encouraging. The mark on her port side was an exact match for the gash on the Hydra’s starboard side. The paint samples matched, too. And there were plenty of fingerprints on the trawler. Shaw had little doubt he’d be able to put Andy Lufkin on board the Skolt the night James Baker?Sibley died.

Lufkin brushed back the blond curly hair, then covered it with the hood of his duffle coat.

DC Twine was trawling through the drawers in a bedside table; a model of concentration, methodically sliding his gloved hand around each drawer, then slipping it out to check underneath.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Valentine. He picked up a cardboard box on a windowsill and from it pulled out the plastic wrapping around a new mobile phone. ‘Your phone?’

Lufkin laughed. ‘It’s not just a phone, Grandad.’ He licked his lips. ‘TV, radio, video messaging. It’s the dog’s bollocks.’

Valentine looked around the flat and tapped his foot against the cheap electric fire sitting in the hearth. ‘You can tell me some more about it down at the nick. Like how you paid for it.’

Lufkin took a packet of gum from the bathroom and chewed loudly as they completed the search. He gave them the key for a drawer in a cheap desk set under the window, inside of which they found a passport, an HGV licence and a certificate of registration with the Trawler Association.

‘Where were you Monday night?’ asked Shaw.

‘Poker. Regular thing — with the Serbs. They can play all right, but I still won. I always win — but they come back for more. Stupid fuckers.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shaw. ‘Perhaps it’s your lucky week. But then again, perhaps it isn’t.’

‘There’s something here, sir,’ said Twine. He was flat on his back, searching under the bed. He rolled clear, a metal canister in either hand.

Each was the shape of a pencil box but the wrong size: larger, almost a shoe?box, in brushed aluminium, with several bands of metal added for strength. Shaw had never seen objects like them.

Twine knelt, put the canisters on the bed, withdrawing his hand quickly. They were all imagining what might be inside.

‘Right,’ said Shaw, his good eye scanning the room. ‘Mr Lufkin — enlighten us.’

Lufkin chewed gum. ‘Never seen them before.’

‘Get him out,’ said Shaw.

Two of the DCs searching the kitchen came in as a uniformed PC took Lufkin down to the squad car. They all stood in a circle as if round a death bed.

‘That one’s heavy,’ said Twine, smearing his hand on his trousers, then pointing.

‘OK — we need to open them,’ said Shaw.

‘Count me out,’ said Valentine.

‘You were never in,’ said Shaw. He picked up the heavier canister quickly and slid the top back a millimetre, then right back, quickly, tipping it over. A gun lay on the soiled sheet.

‘Makarov,’ said Twine. ‘Russian?made pistol — loads come in, mainly from Serbia.’

‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘That explains a lot.’ He’d wondered how Lufkin and Fibich had found it so easy to take Jillie away from her father when they’d boarded the Hydra. Now he knew.

He picked up the other canister, then applied an even pressure to the lid until the contents were revealed, placing it on the bed.

What was inside began to expand, like a time?lapse

Shaw picked one out and held it against the light. A?50 note. He tipped the canister over and prised the bundles out, and they each began to unfurl on the soiled bed; blossoming, like exotic flowers.

By noon the snow clouds had gone, the sky a depthless blue, the only blemish the full moon and the contrails of two 747s leaving a neat cross at 25,000 feet. Another storm lay beyond the horizon at sea, waiting to slide over the coast like a coffin lid. But for now the world was windless, the tide rising in the creeks and marshes as if percolating up, rather than flooding in; the seawater as sluggish as mercury.

Shaw and Valentine stood on the old wooden wharf at Thornham Harbour, a sheet of water as polished as a mirror between them and Nelson’s Island — a tear?shaped bank of gravel in the wide creek on which the Victorians had built a suburban villa, as out of place as Valentine’s black slip?ons. Red brick, with a single Gothic tower, embraced by a copse of pine trees cowed into shape by the north winds. A black Jag was parked in the shadow of the house.

‘Narr lives here?’ asked Valentine, suppressing a series of coughs which shook his narrow shoulders.

‘Moved in ninety?one. So there must be some money in shellfish.’

Since their confrontation the night before they’d kept it like this — professional, distant, and cold. It didn’t seem to bother either of them.

Shaw walked to the wooden dock’s edge and looked

Shaw’s mobile throbbed. It was Twine, passing on the latest from the Ark. Shaw took it all in, cut the link, brought Valentine up to speed. ‘The bloodstain on Lufkin’s wristwatch band looks like a match for Baker?Sibley. Twine says Lufkin’s sweating so fast he’s losing weight. And he’s started talking. Claims Baker?Sibley went for him on the yacht, they fought, he fell and hit his head.’

‘Right,’ said Valentine, laughing. ‘Has he named Narr?’

‘Not yet. Says they heard Baker?Sibley had cash on board. They didn’t know about the girl. But he knows that doesn’t work. He’s talking to the solicitor now. If he’s going down he’ll take Narr with him.’

Valentine nodded.

‘And more progress on Terry Brand. Lufkin’s already named names for the suppliers in Belgium — exotic pets for illegal import — snakes, scorpions, you name it. Claims he doesn’t know what they were bringing in the night Brand died on the raft. But it was something lethal because they were specifically warned about opening the canisters. Lufkin says Brand had been lobbying for more cash for months — reckons he tried to go freelance, took a look, and paid the price.’

‘He’s in the bag,’ said Valentine.

‘Yeah. He is — but he’s the monkey. We’re here to see the organ grinder.’

Shaw raised a hand, pointing to a spot about fifty yards

Over the water they heard a sound from the house.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Like a door in the wind; but there was no wind. Shaw fetched his telescope from the Land Rover and studied the house. In the shadows he could see bay windows, a summer house, and a movement: rhythmic, like a metronome, amongst the pine trees. ‘Narr’s got an alibi, right? We’ve checked it, double?checked it?’

‘Council meeting at the Guildhall — Police Committee,’ said Valentine, reading from his memory. ‘Half the senior officers in the county round the table. Didn’t finish ’til gone midnight. The snow was falling by then so he stayed — wait for it — at the assistant chief constable’s house. Guest room.’

‘As alibis go that’s pretty tight,’ said Shaw. ‘Makes a duck’s arse look like a string vest.’

Shaw walked along the bank of the creek, giving himself some space to think. Jonathan Tessier’s file had been on his desk that morning at 5.45 a.m.

Shaw’s conversation with DCI Warren, if he could call it that, had been terse. Shaw didn’t mind the confrontation with authority, in fact he’d rather enjoyed it once Warren had lost his temper. He’d learned the subtle art of defiance with his father, and he was good at it. What worried him was not the theoretical threat of reprisal, but the skill with which senior levels of the police force could literally close ranks.

Shaw had put the file on Warren’s desk. ‘Murder case from 1997 — Jonathan Tessier.’

Warren didn’t touch it. ‘What’s that to me, Peter? That was Jack’s case, and he made a hash of it; it’s off the books.’

‘Right. We’ve uncovered some fresh information, sir.’

‘We?’

‘DS Valentine and — ’

Warren hit the desk with his fist, a ballpoint spinning off onto the carpet and a picture of his wife and two boys falling flat on their faces. ‘For fuck’s sake, Peter. Leave it — OK? That’s an order. Do you really think the reputation of the West Norfolk needs a fresh dunk in the cesspit? The judge pretty much accused the department — yes, by implication, the whole fucking department — of planting the evidence. Now that may be run of the mill down in the Met, but it isn’t up here. So why do I want to remind anyone of that?’

He’d started off shouting and hadn’t been able to lower his voice, so when he finished he was breathing heavily, a line of sweat on his upper lip.

‘I’m making a formal request, sir,’ said Shaw, unable to

‘Is it?’ said Warren, standing. They both heard the helicopter at the same moment, and looking out the window they saw it coming in to land beyond the perimeter trees, snow swirling, the chief constable returning from a security briefing in Brussels. The blades began to slow, the circular blur separating out as the pilot edged the machine down, below the treetops and out of sight.

‘All right,’ said Warren, placing both hands on his blotter. ‘I will review the evidence, DI Shaw. Then you will have my decision.’

‘Thank you. I’d like it in writing, either way,’ said Shaw, turning his back before he got an answer.

Standing now by the cold sea Shaw examined the moment. Yes, he felt he’d discharged a responsibility at last. But what if Warren declined his request? He watched Valentine shivering on the water’s edge. Maybe he’d been right about Warren. Would the DCI really have the guts to pick the scab off an old sore? A seagull dive?bombed Valentine, trying to pull an unlit cigarette from his hand. He flailed at it, then lit the cigarette in the cup of his hand with his back to the sea.

Shaw’s mobile throbbed again. A picture from Lena. The sudden image made Shaw’s hair stand on end. A pencil

He snapped the phone shut. The causeway had begun to appear from the water, a curving path towards Nelson’s Island, so he led the way. Although the uneven path was still under water in places, it was easy enough to pick their way forward on stepping?stones.

‘We could drive,’ ventured Valentine, looking hopefully at the Land Rover.

‘It’s fifty yards, George — not a walk in the Hindu Kush.’

Shaw set out, his boots splashing. The causeway ran in an elliptical path, resting on the tail of the original gravel bar, so that as they walked they began to see the front of the house, built to face the open sea. There was a lawn, a flagpole freshly whitewashed, a wooden veranda.

Valentine saw her first. He was moving slowly, picking a dry path. He stopped to take a breath and looked up: there was a shadow moving in the stand of old pine trees, where a swing had been hung from the great branches. Someone on the swing, moving in time with the metronome.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Across the lawn their footsteps were silent, but even when they went under the trees, crunching through iced twigs, she didn’t take her eyes off the sea. She was bare?headed, close?cropped. Shaw was struck again by the contradictions in her: the swinging carefree playtime of a child, but the fixed gaze, the self?possession of the adult.

‘Jillie?’ he asked.

She didn’t stop, didn’t look at them. Shaw caught the swing by the rope and the seat, setting her back to the vertical.

Through a break in the dunes they could see white water, a dog running on a beach a mile wide on the mainland.

‘We need to take you home,’ said Shaw.

She fished in a quilted jacket decorated with sewn flowers, then held up a mobile.

‘I’ve phoned. Mum’s coming. She was waiting for the tide.’

‘Mr Narr?’ asked Shaw.

She snapped out of it, jerked her head back as if throwing the long hair she’d once had out of her eyes.

‘He’s home.’

‘Where have you been?’ asked Shaw. ‘Your mother’s been worried. We all have.’

‘I was going to see Dad,’ she laughed. ‘But Colin spotted me on the road. And now I know that I’ll never see Dad.’ She looked at Shaw for the first time and he saw that the incredible violet eyes were dimmed, as if sunk beneath

Valentine stayed with her while Shaw went to check the house. When he opened the door he smelt food. Pork? And something else, a fused plug, a shorting wire?

He called for Narr. From the garden he heard the return of the swing’s rusted motion.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

He climbed the stairs, the smell of the cooked meat getting stronger, knowing that must be wrong. A stained?glass window lit the central stairwell. A fisherman on a biblical boat, hauling in silver fish. On the landing a bedroom door stood open. A double bed, both bedside tables holding alarm clocks, books, a mobile phone on one.

He called again. The bathroom door was open too and he could see into a mirror set above the washbasin, clear, cold, unblushed by steam. In the corridor outside a mug stood on the carpet, full of tea, a thin scuddy film on the surface, and a plug in the socket, the lead trailing away into the bathroom. Shaw pushed at the door and walked in. A shower unit stood empty. The stench of meat was tangible, as if he’d bent forward to get the Sunday roast out of the oven. He turned to look down into the bath.

‘Jesus.’ He took a single step to the toilet bowl and vomited.

Colin Narr lay in the bath, his limbs contorted into an agonizing semaphore. In the water lay a toaster: silver,

The only sound was the swing in the garden.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

Colin Narr had made many mistakes in the last week of his life, but telling Jillie Baker?Sibley that her father had died that night on Styleman’s Middle was his last. In the warmth of the BMW she’d listened to him recount what had happened. How he and her mother had only wanted to protect her, to bring her home. But that her father had been stupid, to tell the men who came to get her that he had cash on board. So little money to die for:?50,000. He said she had to understand, that lies were necessary. Neither he nor her mother had planned that James should die. It had been Lufkin and Fibich’s fault. Narr said he’d been horrified when Lufkin told him what had happened; and he’d kept it from her mother. But it was too late — James was dead. They had to do what was right for Jillie and Sarah. Jillie had smiled then, because it was really about what was right for him.

How had he found her? Mother’s intuition. James had a cottage near East Midlands airport, a village close to the motorway. Sarah had never been given a key, even after they were married. But if they’d made a plan — daughter and father — then that would be it. To meet there. Jillie had some money of her own, a bank card. But they knew she’d keep clear of the trains and coaches. And Sarah knew she loved hitch?hiking, because she’d been forbidden to do it. She’d gone into Lynn once with

And they were right. When those men had come aboard the Hydra to take her away they’d let her have a minute alone with her father. He hadn’t argued with them because the little man had a gun. He kept passing it from hand to hand, the sweat glistening on the cold metal. But he’d asked for some time alone. That’s when he’d given her the key, told her to get to the cottage when she could. He’d be there. Then the foreign one had rowed her ashore. She’d waited for her moment to leave home and then stuck to the plan. And she would have seen it through, up until the moment she’d climbed into Narr’s black Jag. He’d told her that her father was dead. And that had changed the world. She’d lost a brother, and now she’d lost her father. It was about time someone paid the price.

They sat in silence during the rest of the ride back to Narr’s house. Jillie’s hands clenched and unclenched, imagining revenge. All the anger she’d harboured during her young life had finally found a target. Someone upon whom she could focus her hate.

The tide was out so they’d driven over. She’d said she wasn’t in a hurry to get home, her mother would be in the shop, so he could eat, have a bath — he’d been out all night; she’d text her mum. They’d had eggs on toast. He’d broken the eggs scraping them out of the pan, but the bread had popped up nicely browned from the toaster with a silver anchor on the side.

Sarah Baker?Sibley was on her way. So he’d filled the bath and she’d made tea. He said to leave it outside the

Had she said anything? Shaw had asked.

She’d thought about that, coolly reconstructing the moment of murder.

‘No. Nothing.’ She’d smiled then, running her hand through her short hair. ‘I know what I thought. I thought that I had a brother once and that I’d forgiven Dad for killing him. But I couldn’t forgive anyone any more, not for anything. Either of them. You can’t spend your whole life forgiving people.’ She’d crossed her hands on her lap. ‘That’s taking advantage.’

There was silence round the table in the Red House. The jukebox had run dry while Shaw was briefing them. DC Twine tilted his head back and finished his bottle of Chimay.

‘Will she talk?’ asked Mark Birley, one of his ham?sized hands wrapped round a pint.

‘Sarah Baker?Sibley? She’s talking already,’ said Shaw. ‘She rang Narr from Gallow Marsh the night of the storm. She didn’t know what they’d do, of course. Her crime was not telling us what she’d done. Jillie’s given us a positive ID on Lufkin — so it’s all over for him. We can put him on the boat, the forensics are watertight, and the motive comes in fifty?pound notes. I’m recommending a murder charge tomorrow when I see Warren.’

‘What happens to Jillie?’ asked Twine.

‘And her mother?’

‘Sedation. Then we’ll see. If Jillie ever gets out she’ll need her mother. She’ll have to face charges, but I can’t see any court sending her down.’

They all drank in silence.

‘So — we started with three dead men. Two down — one to go. Lufkin killed James Baker?Sibley. Terry Brand died of curiosity while smuggling for Narr. But Harvey Ellis is still on the books. His killer is our priority. But that’s for tomorrow.’ Shaw finished a pint of Guinness and handed Valentine the empty glass.

They’d set up a darts tournament and were taking it in turns to ring Fiona Campbell in hospital, sending pictures by mobile. She’d had another blood transfusion, her condition was stable, but the knife wound across her neck would take a month to heal, a necklace for ever.

Pint glasses covered the pub’s plywood tables. Birley put all his fruit?machine winnings in the jukebox to stop Jacky Lau playing any more Kaiser Chiefs. Twine was trying to explain the basic science behind lighting techniques to locate blood traces, using a set of beer mats. Shaw sent Lena a picture too, a pint of Guinness on the table, a shamrock in the top. A signal: he’d be late. He hoped she’d understand.

He waited until Valentine had been knocked out of the darts tournament before passing him the pub’s copy

Askit’s Agricultural Engineers

Established 1926

He leant in close, taking an inch off the top of the Guinness. ‘The file’s with Warren. You’ve got a right to know what’s in it. Everything that’s in it.’

Valentine looked at his drink.

‘What would you say if I told you I think Jonathan Tessier may have spent the last few hours of his life at Askit’s factory?’

‘Why not just tell me?’ said Valentine, his jaw set. Shaw checked that nobody else was within earshot. ‘Jonathan’s football kit was covered in a fine spray of a specialist paint. Askit’s is the only local business to take that paint in 1997. Askit’s sprayed on the premises. But the kit’s mobile — I rang them up and talked to the foreman. You can load up a few gallons and get the air gun and gas cylinders into a van. So — maybe on the premises, probably on the premises, but maybe not.’

‘I need a fag,’ said Valentine.

They stood and went down a corridor that smelt of urine and out into a small courtyard. The landlord had bought a gas heater and a small gazebo. Dog?ends lay in the snow around it and through a plastic loud speaker the jukebox music played. The gas popped, flared, and popped again. Shaw thought it sounded like they were in the basket of a hot?air balloon, sailing unseen over the city of the sober.

‘But that isn’t all you’ve found out, is it?’ said Valentine.

Shaw closed his eyes. ‘No.’ He edged closer to the gas heater, turning one of the limpet shells in his pocket. ‘I checked Askit’s out through the files. Then I cross?checked the company with all criminal records online for West Norfolk from 1995. And I got something — a match. A witness at a juvenile court case in the summer of ninety?six. Timber Woods dug me out the file.’

Valentine didn’t say anything.

‘There was a child, another child,’ said Shaw. ‘Poynter. Gideon Poynter — they called him Giddy. He was twelve, lived on the Westmead. The family used to have money, before the father disappeared, so the Westmead must have been a bit of a shock. Mum had trouble because they were new on the estate and by local standards a bit on the posh side: so, standard welcome party — fire on her doorstep, dog shit through the letterbox, a late?night thud on the front door. She set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme. She planned a public meeting and sent Giddy out with posters and fliers.’

‘Quite. Someone suggested she might like to forget the idea. She declined. So they thought they’d teach her a lesson, by teaching Giddy one.’

‘What’d they do?’ asked Valentine, licking his bottom lip.

‘They took him. A Sunday night, after dark. He was out playing on the landing so they bundled him down the stairwell. Four young thugs put him in one of the bins under the flats, one of the metal ones, and tied a bit of rope round the handle so he couldn’t force it open from the inside.’

Shaw leant back, trying to remember that this had really happened, that it wasn’t some sick plot from a TV thriller.

‘But he got out?’ said Valentine. ‘He must have got out.’ When they’d picked up Bobby Mosse that night in July 1997 they’d checked back through the files; reviewed every serious crime on the estate for the last eighteen months. Standard murder inquiry procedure. Valentine didn’t remember anything about Giddy Poynter.

‘Yeah, he got out. Eventually. Before they put him in the bin they showed him what was inside it.’ Shaw looked at the bottom of his empty pint glass. ‘Rats. Half a dozen. That’s what counted as a joke on the Westmead.’

‘How long was he in there?’ said Valentine. The drink had wiped some of the anger and tension out of the line of his mouth, the narrowed eyes.

‘The council emptied the bins at seven the next morning. The kid was traumatized, couldn’t speak. He needed help, probably still does. But it was just another

‘So how’d they catch them?’

‘The kids wore gloves but one of them had a hole in the finger. There was enough to get a match — that was…’ He checked his notebook. ‘Kid by the name of Cosyns. He was on file, even then. Another two stepped up for it when he was charged. Proud of it in fact. Bunch of little heroes.’

‘But just the three?’

‘Yeah. They never got the fourth.’ They both thought about that for a second, thinking the same thing, that it could have been Bobby Mosse. ‘The three got suspended sentences and community service. Nothing custodial. Know why?’

Valentine jiggled his empty pint.

‘Employer took the stand, said they’d all got decent jobs, prospects, and if they got sent down he’d have to let them go.’

‘Askit’s,’ said Valentine.

‘Askit’s. A year later we’ve got forensic evidence linking Askit’s to Jonathan Tessier’s murder. And Tessier’s body’s found in the underground car park, a hundred yards from the waste bins where Giddy Poynter spent the worst night of his life.’ It was the kind of coincidence, thought Shaw, that didn’t happen in the real world.

‘Is there a link to Bobby Mosse?’ asked Valentine. ‘Other than the fact Mosse lived on the Westmead — none.’ He watched as Valentine’s hooded eyes closed. He knew what his DS was thinking; that Warren would use

They heard the last bell ring and went back to the party. Half an hour later they were walking through deserted backstreets towards the car park at St James’s. Opposite the police station was a park, stone griffins on each gatepost, the Gothic ironwork hung with icicles. Inside a necklace of white lamps led through the darkness across unblemished snow. On a bench a tramp slept, the snow a blanket.

Shaw checked his mobile. He had one message — Justina Kazimierz. The US Wildlife laboratory in Ashland, Oregon had identified the venom she’d extracted from Terry Brand’s arm. A spider: the Indian white jacket. Very rare, very nasty. On the black market they’d fetch $3,000 each.

‘Justina,’ he said to Valentine. ‘She says our man on Ingol Beach was bitten by a spider. Rare, valuable, fatal bite.’

‘Terrific,’ said Valentine. British household spiders made him jump. Anything bigger and he’d be running before he knew he was scared.

Shaw looked through the park gates. ‘I used to meet Dad here sometimes in the summer holidays,’ he said. ‘A half?hour lunch hour. I’d walk in from the North End, wait for him down by the pond. I had a sailboat. It was the one place he’d go without the radio — here and the beach. I’d bring a football, or a Frisbee, like we were by the sea. He’d sit and describe the view from Gun Hill, as if he was there. He’d bring chips. A can of beer. I’d play in the shadows, fight dragons under the trees.’ He laughed. ‘I miss him.’

Shaw took a deep breath. ‘George. I told you how this is going to be.’ The snow was driving in again from the docks, so they turned their backs and looked through the ironwork gates. ‘It’s Warren’s call. He’s got everything I know, everything you know. We’re off the case.’

‘You too?’ asked Valentine, a smile disfiguring his face.

‘Me too.’ Shaw tasted a snowflake on his lip, caught the acid hint of carbon dioxide. ‘I’m the son of the investigating DCI. The officer explicitly censured by the judge in the original trial. Any juror would accept that I had an interest in clearing Jack Shaw’s name.’

‘And do you?’

Shaw clenched his fists, stamped his feet, spooking a raven which rattled into one of the snow?laden trees. He felt trapped, and that made him angry. And when he was angry he needed exercise, needed to dissipate the energy. But he couldn’t run.

‘I have an interest in finding out who killed Jonathan Tessier.’

‘But you’re not sure that’s the same thing, are you?’

‘No. That’s right,’ he said, aware that he’d been cornered into the implied accusation. Because if he didn’t trust Jack Shaw, then he didn’t trust George Valentine either.

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ said Valentine, flapping the raincoat like a pair of furled wings. ‘I’m done for,’ he said, suddenly deflated. ‘I’m going home.’

But he didn’t mean it.

Valentine walked down through the town to Vancouver’s statue. The day had left him confused and exhausted. They’d cracked open the heart of the case — he was sure of that. But his final confrontation with Shaw had sucked the adrenaline out of him. The thought that his future, what was left of it, was in the hands of DCS Max Warren made him feel impotent, discarded.

He wandered back towards Greenland Street, forcing himself not to steal a glance ahead to check if the light shone from the house on the corner. It did. And there, low down in the curved plate glass of the double doors of the old shop, the white piece of crisp cartridge paper.

Yat ye hoi p’i

‘The game is open, night and day,’ said Valentine, translating.

He knocked twice, waited, knocked again.

A man opened the door, the man they called the sentinel. Beyond the doors the sudden heat enveloped them both. The sentinel stood, smiling, waiting for him to choose. Which was polite of him, because although upstairs, in the loft, they played white pigeon, Valentine always climbed down to the basement for fan?tan.

He took one of the tall stools beside the fan?tan table. The cashier sat to one side, the dealer stood. There were eight players, each on stools. There was no alcohol — Valentine liked it that way, he liked his vices singly, and this way he knew that he’d really enjoy the thrill of luck.

An hour later he’d made?300. The dealer smiled at him. ‘The numbers like you,’ he said.

‘Makes a change,’ said Valentine, using the answer he always had ready.

He stood, stretching, poured himself some water and went to the far end of the room to sit. He always stopped at?300. It was his interim limit, the point when he forced himself to take stock. Fan?tan was a game of pure chance. George Valentine’s grip on the laws of probability was crisp. He knew that a winning streak was no less likely to lead to another winning streak than a losing streak. But?300 up was always a good time to think about what it meant: six crisp?50 notes. After all, he could spend the money.

The far end of the room was a rest station. A set of gweilo was present, so the three Chinese already there switched from Mandarin immediately.

The snow was keeping people in, they agreed. Even the police. They all laughed because DS Valentine had never hidden his trade; indeed his relationship with illegal gambling was fundamentally symbiotic. When the Serious Crime Squad had tried to clear up the gambling dens of South Lynn the house in Greenland Street had been mysteriously empty, the cellar crammed with broken furniture.

Valentine thrust a hand in his pocket to get his handkerchief but found, instead, a scrap of paper. He took it out, unfolded it: the six savage lines on the side of John Holt’s car door. He’d recognized immediately that it wasn’t just a scrawl, a mindless graffito. But now, suddenly, he was sure he knew what it was. He just didn’t know what it meant.

‘Anyone know what this says?’ he said, flattening it out on the table.

They all looked at each other, a necklace of glances which didn’t include him.

‘Joe’s sign,’ said the man they called Paddy. He was compact, the racial characteristics of his face mixed with something subtle: Anglo?Saxon perhaps, or Celt. ‘It’s his name. Simple as that.’

‘And who’s Joe?’ asked Valentine.

‘A loan shark?’

‘With sharp teeth,’ said Paddy, running a finger along his own.

Shaw waded out onto the beach at Old Hunstanton, bare feet running over the snow on the sand above the high?tide mark, water falling off the winter wetsuit. Lena stood on the sands cradling a mug. She laughed at him, the way he lifted his feet quickly off the cold pebbles which lay in front of the cafe.

They walked back to the cottage and she lay on the rug in front of the wood?burning stove while he got out of the suit and found a bathrobe. She held a portable shaving mirror up while he looked at his injured eye. The scar was fading, the sutured eyelids still pressed together in the bruised socket. Lena bathed the eye in water from a bottle, then took a fresh dressing from the batch Shaw had been given at the clinic.

‘It’s healing,’ she said. ‘Francesca will be upset. She thinks you look like a pirate.’

Lena left him in the dark, watching the incoming waves, luminous on a moonless night. Swimming, he’d cleared his head, then filled it again. On his back, his arms rising and falling, he’d seen the Pole Star through a thin disc of cirrus. He’d put the Tessier case out of his mind and instead tried to piece together the first twenty?four hours of the Ellis inquiry. The answer was in the detail, he’d told himself, always in the detail.

He saw in his memory Holt again, in his hospital bed.

He thought of the two halves of the shattered dental work, the apple on the dashboard of Ellis’s truck, and the image made him smile at last.

As he padded down the corridor and into their bedroom, Lena turned in the shadows, an arm thrown across the sheet, welcoming, and his heart skipped a beat.

At the fan?tan table Valentine had lost heavily, handing in his playing card at just after one o’clock when he’d got down to?50. He stood in the hall waiting for his coat. He could hear the boy crying somewhere and the reason was plain: the electric car lay on its side, the battery compartment open, the four AAs, presumably spent, spilt out.

The sentinel returned with his coat.

‘Costs a fortune,’ said Valentine. ‘Keeping a car on the road these days.’

‘Least he sleep now,’ said the man, nodding, showing too many teeth. ‘Sleeps like the dead.’

The moment he stood on the step, and the door closed behind him, the thought hit him and Valentine knew he was right. A child’s toy, bereft of batteries. He saw the inside of Harvey Ellis’s pick?up truck, smelt the spilt blood, listened again to the unnatural silence which always seems to shroud the dead.

The night air, the thrill of understanding, made his