Death Wore White

6

Saturday, 14 February

George Valentine lay in bed listening to the gentle throb of a three?litre engine. It was parked below his bedroom window. The street light still showed between the curtains, and the alarm clock said seven. He wanted to sleep, to stave off the yearning for nicotine, the pillowcase still holding the dim memory of his last illicit Silk Cut.

‘Well, fuck this,’ he said, getting up, pulling back the curtain and running up the sash before he’d looked out. The cold air hit him like a bucket of iced water. DI Peter Shaw was standing by the Land Rover, the engine running, a police radio to his ear.

‘I said early start,’ he said, looking up. ‘I meant very early start — sorry.’ A gust of sea breeze blew off the freezing river and rippled through Valentine’s pyjamas. He slammed the window shut.

As soon as Valentine opened the door Shaw knew that this was part of the DS’s life he’d not imagined. The hallway was uncarpeted, but spotless, a picture on a hook of Valentine as a teenager, sitting on a beach with a woman with long legs and a smile hidden in the shadow from a stylish sun hat. Valentine at twenty, perhaps still a teenager even, a mop of hair over the narrow face, the cheekbones rakish rather than cadaverous. Did Shaw remember his

The kitchen was 1950s basic. A wooden draining board, ugly taps and a stone basin. Valentine made tea, changed, then smoked while the pot brewed. He poured the liquid into two mugs, added milk from a fridge which was otherwise empty.

He hadn’t said a word, and Shaw sensed he was enjoying the silence.

‘No cards then?’ said Shaw.

‘What?’

‘There’s nothing on the mat. It’s Valentine’s Day.’ Valentine ignored him, taking a scrap of paper from his pocket and placed it on the table.

Shaw leant back, balancing the stool on two legs. ‘This is the mark left on Holt’s car.’ Valentine coughed, stubbed out the cigarette, played with the packet. ‘Chinese name character for Joe. I asked some questions. He’s a loan shark with a reputation for using muscle to collect. I think we can take it that daubing one of these…’ he stabbed the Chinese character with his finger, ‘on someone’s car door is a final demand. A very final demand.’ He knocked a fresh cigarette on the table top. ‘Holt.’

‘It’s a motive?’ asked Shaw.

‘Yeah. Think about it.’

Shaw did. Holt needed the money — he was desperate; living in a slum down by the docks, supporting a daughter who couldn’t work, a granddaughter. So James Baker?Sibley recruits him. Ellis too.

‘There’s more,’ said Shaw. ‘I’ve got Twine out at Holt’s dentist. Night he was taken in the Queen Vic he lost his

‘The apple?’ asked Valentine.

‘Maybe.’

‘I should have thought of that,’ said Valentine, annoyed with himself.

‘We both should have,’ said Shaw.

Valentine stood and went to the raincoat hung on the pantry door. He took out a plastic evidence bag: inside was the toy eagle which had hung from the roof of Harvey Ellis’s truck.

Shaw went to touch it, then stopped.

Valentine held up his hands. ‘It’s all booked out. No problems — it’s been dusted, everything.’

He unpopped the seal and retrieved the toy. He found a tag on the underside with his index finger and a plastic door opened to reveal a slot for a single AAA battery. Against the light he held the plastic evidence bag. Inside was a battery.

‘Hadden’s team didn’t check it. I did. It’s flat.’ Valentine produced a TV remote control from the kitchen drawer and knocked out a battery, slotting it into the toy. Then he flipped a switch on the breastplate. The wings flapped, up and down, a jagged movement. Standing, he turned on the kitchen light and held the toy up to the bulb. Shadows danced around them — the kind of shadows Shaw had taken for movement that night on Siberia Belt when he’d first spotted the pick?up truck.

They sat in silence for a moment, Shaw laying both hands out flat on the table, palms down.

‘Except that dead men don’t drive pick?up trucks,’ said Shaw.

‘Then the killer did. Footprints, or no footprints.’

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

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

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

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

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

Three 7s: the code for the hovercraft.

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

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

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

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

They had a visual contact within nine minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

They clambered aboard but as the father swung his leg

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

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

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

Valentine’s Mazda was parked in a lay?by off the muddy track which led towards Blickling Cottages; the home of John Holt’s daughter and granddaughter. Holt was clearly visiting, his Corsa — released from the police compound — was parked on the concrete forecourt. Shaw put the Land Rover behind the Mazda and jumped out, his hair still wet from the sea spray.

Bending his knees he dropped down to talk through the open driver’s window.

‘Did you get his dental records?’ asked Shaw. ‘Hadden says there’s no match with Holt. Nothing like.’

‘Shit!’ Shaw wiped salt off his forehead with the back of his hand. He’d been sure, so sure. The cloudless sky was beginning to darken to the east, dusk slinking along the coast like a black cat.

So if they weren’t John Holt’s teeth marks, whose were they? The hitch?hiker’s? Logic told them Holt was lying about finding Ellis alive at the wheel that night. But they had no evidence he was a killer. They weren’t his tooth marks on the apple. It wasn’t his footprint in the blood. Hadden had checked the boots and shoes of everyone in the convoy on Siberia Belt, and there’d been no match.

But they did know Holt had been borrowing money

‘We’re sure Holt’s here?’ asked Shaw, standing. Valentine swished a single snowflake off the windscreen. The cottages lay in a small copse of trees amongst vast rutted fields. A narrow lane followed the gradient of a shallow valley. To one side lay a sports field, the snow cleared from the lines of a football pitch. By the road and a gravel car park stood a pavilion: whitewashed wood with two onion?domed turrets on either end of a wide stoop, the roof supported by carved pillars and free of snow. An exotic fragment of Russian romance in a snowy Fen field. The windows were half?shuttered and Shaw thought he glimpsed a light within, but it was gone as soon as he saw it out of the corner of his eye. A reflection perhaps of the low winter sun.

Just beyond the pavilion a farm track led over the hill. An unmarked Ford was obscured by snow?laden bushes. ‘Twine got traffic to volunteer,’ said Valentine. ‘They’ve had Holt under surveillance since he left the hospital.’

‘OK, let’s do it,’ said Shaw, walking round the front of the Mazda and pulling open the passenger?side door. ‘We’ve still got more than enough to rattle his cage.’

John Holt was at the side of the house standing on a plank ten feet off the ground supported by two sets of stepladders. He wore a pair of new blue overalls, and heavy?duty boots. Two trees stood on either side of the door. Lopped branches from a magnolia tree lay on the path beneath. The sycamore had been pruned back

Shaw stamped his feet in the snow to get his circulation back. Holt didn’t look round and it occurred to Shaw for the first time that he might be deaf, but when he spoke he could see that his arrival was not a surprise.

‘Is that wise, Mr Holt? Shouldn’t you be resting?’

In a hospital bed John Holt had appeared diminished, weak, held down it seemed by the weight of the blankets. He didn’t look a lot more robust now, perched on his makeshift scaffolding. The eyes still blinked warily from behind the thick lenses.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Detective Inspector,’ he said, peering down. Shaw sensed that discharging himself from hospital, completing the errand that was interrupted by Monday night’s diversion onto Siberia Belt, was part of a ritual demonstration that old age had yet to defeat John Holt. ‘Your people brought my gardening stuff back with the car, so I thought I’d better finish the job.’ He pulled back a branch and lopped it neatly with a pair of secateurs. ‘Sasha’s not very happy, mind you. We’ve had tears.’ Then he swung himself out onto the top rung of one of the ladders and climbed down, although Valentine noticed that he didn’t drop a step before getting a double grip with his hands.

Back on earth he looked out over the garden. ‘Pity about the snow, I had it all neat and tidy.’ Shaw could see a precise row of roses breaking through a drift, the edge of a hedge trimmed to a topiary finish. A large vegetable garden stretched beyond the flowers, leeks in military rows breaking through the snow cover.

‘I’m a farmer’s son. It’s in the blood.’

‘That’s quite something,’ said Shaw, looking out over the sports field to the pavilion.

‘Local bigwigs gave the field to the village back in the 1880s — pavilion came with it. One of them made a fortune as a merchant in Moscow. It’s listed, but the local kids don’t seem to mind. Vandalize it pretty much once a month. I keep an eye on the place — unpaid night watchman. They’ve got one of those security firms checking it out — bloody useless.’

He took off his gloves and rubbed his hands. ‘We better go in, warm up,’ he said. The front door stood open, a fresh coat of red paint still wet. Valentine thought it was an odd time to paint a door.

Inside seven?year?old Sasha played on the rug, crayons scattered over a series of pieces of white paper covered in delicate lines of colour. A glue pot and paints stood beside a neat pile of sycamore seeds — the tiny winged ‘helicopters’ that children love. A book lay open on the floor as well, and Shaw recognized the cover — one his daughter had struggled with over Christmas. The little girl stood, holding the book by the corner, so that it hung down. A black cat lay at her feet, dozing.

‘Bright kid, then?’ said Shaw, nodding at a woman he took for her mother.

She sat in one of the armchairs and hadn’t got up. She seemed startled that anyone had spoken to her. ‘Yes. I don’t know how that happened,’ she laughed, trying to

The bungalow was furnished in second?hand furniture, cheap but sturdy. There was a flat?screen TV, but it appeared to be the only luxury.

‘Yes, this is my Sasha,’ said Holt, not introducing his daughter.

‘This is Kit,’ said Sasha, holding the cat like a baby. Shaw smiled, working his way along the family snapshots on the sideboard. There were more frames on the mantelpiece and a side table. He tried to memorize each picture, overlaying them one on another, establishing the family face. And then he found the one he was looking for, the picture of the gawky teenage Michelle, a slip of a girl, the limbs all elbows and knees, but the face a haunting echo of her father’s. And another child, cuddling a black kitten. Shaw held the frame, tapping the glass, trying to age the child’s face into an adult’s. Wondering why she looked familiar.

‘It’s Michelle, isn’t it — Michelle Holt?’ he said, replacing the picture and offering his hand. He bounced slightly on

Holt’s wife brought him tea in a china cup and saucer, setting it on a side table which also carried a crossword puzzle book and a remote control for the flat?screen TV.

‘It’s not a coincidence, is it?’ asked Shaw. ‘Blickling Cottages. It’s your middle name — Blickling.’

Valentine smiled. He knew the young DI hated coincidence, while for him it was the sister of luck.

Holt’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses of the black?rimmed spectacles. ‘Yes, that’s right, Inspector. I built the cottages back in 1963. We lived here when we were married. As I said, I’m a farmer’s son, but not a farmer’s eldest son. So I had to find my own way in the world.’

He paused and Valentine wondered if he wanted a round of applause.

‘We went bust two years ago — just in time for a leisurely retirement.’ He smiled, but didn’t make a good job of it.

Valentine got the obvious question in first. ‘Who lives next door, then?’

‘We sold that. It’s rented. Tenants come and go.’

‘And we’ve remortgaged this,’ said Michelle, biting her lip.

‘I’m sure Inspector Shaw doesn’t want to know our business, Micky.’

Shaw went to the bay window and looked out into the garden of the house next door. Michelle sipped tea from

‘We don’t pay rent. I can’t work. I’m ill.’

Holt looked away, ashamed of her. Outside snow fell on the sports field. ‘Should be a match this afternoon,’ said Holt. ‘But there’s too much snow. I never miss when they play,’ he said, sipping the tea.

Valentine interlaced his fingers and cracked the joints. Michelle ate cake, methodically, without any apparent enjoyment. The sound of her jaws working filled the little overheated room.

Shaw’s temper snapped silently. ‘I’d like to talk to you alone, Mr Holt — in private.’

Holt peered at him through the thick glasses. ‘Anything you want to say to me you can say now.’

‘Very well, Mr Holt. When you went forward to the pick?up truck that night on Siberia Belt, Harvey Ellis was already dead, wasn’t he?’

Had Holt expected the question? He placed the empty side?plate carefully on a table, and his cup and saucer were steady in his hand.

‘I don’t understand.’ He looked at his wife for support.

‘John wouldn’t lie to you,’ she said.

Michelle shuffled towards the edge of the armchair and leant down to help her daughter glue helicopters to a piece of paper.

Shaw stood. ‘Ellis was killed before the convoy of cars drew up on Siberia Belt — the spot where he died was

Holt licked a finger. ‘I’m sorry. But he was. He was as alive as you are now, Inspector. That’s the truth. If it doesn’t fit the evidence I suggest you have another look at the evidence. And you had witnesses, didn’t you? People who saw him move after we got stuck?’ He sipped his tea, knowing now that something was wrong.

‘The hitch?hiker — the young girl?’ asked Valentine, trying to lead him on.

‘I made her up too, did I?’ said Holt, the voice just catching an edge at last. ‘My, I’ve been busy.’

Shaw picked up the teenage picture of Michelle Holt. ‘Hardly busy,’ he said. ‘This is the woman you described to me, isn’t it? You changed the hair colour. Tried to make it someone else. But it’s Michelle.’

Shaw turned the picture and held it to his chest. Valentine saw it too now, the likeness that they’d plastered across TV screens and newspaper front pages. Michelle held a tissue to her mouth, her eyes swimming with tears.

‘I should have known. It’s a classic mistake to make,’ said Shaw. ‘At first you struggled to give me the form of the face, but then your confidence grew and there was too much detail.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Inspector.’ Holt looked at his tea, blowing on the steaming surface. ‘You’ve upset my daughter. I think you should go.’

Valentine put down his cup and Shaw saw the slight flush rise on his throat. A good sign — the DS didn’t like being treated like an idiot any more than Shaw did.

Martha Holt jumped visibly, suddenly readjusting herself in the armchair.

‘Joe who?’ asked Holt, but he’d said it too quickly. ‘Joe the loan shark. The one who left his calling card on the side of your car.’

Martha Holt stood. ‘Do we have to deal with this now? John’s not been well.’

‘Leave it,’ said Holt, not looking at his wife, slapping her down. Shaw knew then he could be a cruel man.

‘Money’s a problem,’ said Holt. ‘Of course it’s a problem. But we’ll be all right. I’m telling you, Inspector, that man was alive when I saw him at the wheel of the pick?up. I’m sorry, but he was alive, and the hitch?hiker was sitting next to him.’

Shaw tried one more time. ‘So how did you solve your money problem, Mr Holt? Did James Baker?Sibley ask for your help? Did he pay for your help? Did you get the money? Were you on Siberia Belt that night to make sure the woman in the Alfa couldn’t reverse back to the main road?’

Holt struggled to his feet. ‘You really have lost me, Inspector. I think this has gone on long enough. I’d like you to leave now.’

They told Holt they’d be interviewing him again. He wasn’t to leave the area without contacting St James’s. Martha Holt took them to the door but little Sasha pushed through and handed Shaw a piece of paper on which

Shaw smiled. ‘Thank you, Sasha. That’ll keep me warm.’

As they drove away they didn’t see her grandfather standing by the window, a phone to his ear.