Death Wore White

7

Sunday, 15 February

Shaw woke a minute before the alarm at 5.30. He made coffee, and drank it outside. It was too dark to see the sky but the absence of stars told him the snow clouds had returned. He ran to the Land Rover along the still?frozen beach. By six he was on the towpath up?river of Boal Quay. Lights shone in kitchens and bathrooms in the tower blocks of the South End. Hedgehogs crept across the open concrete of the floodlit car parks. In mid?stream a Russian freighter waited to slip into the Alexandra Dock, its super?structure floodlit, the decks deserted, hot air drifting from vents in skyscapes of steam.

Shaw walked away from the sea. For the first time since he’d woken up he tried to think. When he’d handed over the Tessier file to DCI Warren he’d told him, promised him, that his role in the case was over. And he’d told Valentine the same. And he meant it. But then, when he’d got back to the station on Saturday afternoon, he’d found a note from Timber Woods.

Peter,

The attached may help. I still think you should let it lie. But I’m not sure what Jack would do — so do with this what you think is right.

Timber

Timber had set about finding Giddy Poynter with exemplary thoroughness. The child’s ordeal in the rat?infested waste bin had been enough to disturb a mature adult, let alone a small, timid boy of twelve. So Timber Woods had gone to the record office at social services. Gideon Poynter had been an outpatient for three years after the incident in 1997, at the child psychology department at the Queen Vic. Absence from school on medical grounds was the hallmark of his academic career. He suffered from stress and anxiety, manifested by a series of uncontrollable phobias. Giddy, living now in sheltered housing in Lynn, attended a mental health unit twice a week. The patient suffered from profound claustrophobia, an irrational but almost tangible fear of being trapped. He had lived rough on the streets of Lynn for six months before the council was able to find him a flat in which each and every window could be opened. He’d wanted a balcony too, just big enough for a chair, on which he often slept if the weather was mild. There’d been a home number and mobile on the file for Poynter’s social worker so Shaw had phoned. He promised he’d tread carefully, to respect Giddy’s fears. In return he’d got an outline of Giddy’s daily routine.

Ahead, along the river path, he could see the graveyard

The morning was still dark so that the steady stream of traffic overhead, thrumming, traced a necklace of lights in a graceful curve over the water.

Shaw stepped through a metal gate and walked amongst the graves. There was a bench under a single lamp post which splashed a pool of jaundiced light on the snow. Above he could see bats flitting in the girders, roosting like black snowballs stuck to the rivets. He brushed the snow off the seat and sat waiting, emptying his mind, trying not to think of death.

When he saw the small shambling figure with thin, lank hair, he thought he must be wrong. Giddy would be twenty?three, twenty?four, a young man still despite the horrors of his short life. This man was as ageless as all those who lived on the streets, hidden from the world like a leper, wrapped in a formless heavy coat. Clutching a plastic supermarket bag to his chest with one hand, he

It took him too long and Shaw guessed that he’d seen him and that he always sat on this bench; although there was another.

So Shaw stood. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this is your place at this time. My name’s Peter. I’m a policeman. I just wanted a word, Giddy.’

The man turned, a knee on the wet grass. His face was fine, a thin nose, delicate cheekbones, and a high, brittle forehead. A miniature face, stunted. Acne disfigured the skin and a half?hearted moustache straggled over his mouth, hiding his upper lip.

He didn’t respond and Shaw wondered if he was shivering or shaking. ‘Giddy. Can I talk to you?’ Shaw opened a small rucksack he’d put at his feet, taking out a thermos flask. ‘It’s tea, would you like a cup? Bernard said you liked tea in the morning.’

Bernard Parkin was the man Shaw had spoken to the previous day. He was Giddy’s social worker, and the closest thing he had in the world to a friend.

A pigeon flapped around the headstones and Giddy stood quickly, walking sideways to the bench. He sat hunched against the armrest.

‘I always sit here,’ he said. ‘It’s under the sky.’

Shaw leant back and looked directly up. He was right, the edge of the roadway above was twenty feet to one side, giving a clear view of the clouds of dawn.

‘Mum’s grave,’ said Giddy. ‘Yes,’ said Shaw.

‘I’m sorry, Giddy. It’s about the boys who locked you up.’

Giddy tried to look into Shaw’s face. The eyes were dove?grey, and one of them oscillated slightly, as if struggling to focus. ‘I never talk about that.’

‘I know. I’m going to speak to those boys soon — the three that were caught and punished. Do you want me to say anything to them?’

Giddy thought about it. ‘Tell them I’m happy now. Better.’

Shaw nodded. ‘And the fourth one — I just thought you might have known who it was. Did you, Giddy?’

Giddy looked at him then, the grey eye wandering. ‘Stop following me.’

‘I’m not following you.’

He stood, one arm jerking suddenly, the plastic bag gyrating. ‘Fucking are.’ He walked away, then turned. ‘Dark glasses yesterday,’ he said. ‘But I know. You were in the stairwell last night, and then by the park this morning. I don’t like it, it’s like being trapped outside. Stop it.’

He walked back to Shaw, looked him in the face. ‘Stop it.’ He looked at the graveyard as if seeing it for the first time. ‘I don’t want you here, but I can’t leave.’

Shaw nodded. ‘I’ll go. If you want to talk, or you need help, ring this number.’ He put a card on the seat, and a?10 note, weighing it down with one of the limpet shells.

As Valentine drove east along the coast road, a hoar frost had the countryside in its grip, adding bone?white trees to a landscape of fresh snow. Shaw tried to focus on the events on Siberia Belt the night Harvey Ellis died. The central mystery remained: who had killed him, and how? They’d now interviewed everyone in the line of stranded cars at least twice: all except the teenager who had run from the scene that night as the helicopter had swung in to land on Ingol Beach — young Sebastian Draper. His solicitor had phoned to say he’d be available for interview at nine that morning — but that his client wanted to meet at a scrap?metal yard on the edge of Wells. He had something to show them, as well as tell them.

John Kimbolton amp; Sons was a graveyard for cars. It lay a mile out of town on the saltmarsh, the tottering piles of wrecked chassis only partly hidden behind an ugly hedge of leylandii tinted with frost. They flashed their warrant cards at a mechanic working with a welding torch by the entrance.

‘Just looking for a vehicle,’ said Valentine. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

Draper arrived on the stroke of the hour in a powder?blue Bentley driven by his solicitor. The 18?year?old hadn’t chosen his own clothes that morning: a charcoal?grey suit, the blue tie knotted savagely tight, the shirt as white as

They shook hands; two detectives, solicitor and client.

‘OK. Sebastian? Why here?’ said Shaw, the snow beginning to fall. They stood by a little column of six crushed cars, one on top of the other. Shaw rested an ungloved hand on the nearest chassis, then pulled it back as he felt his skin freeze to the metal.

Draper had rehearsed his story, which didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

The gap?year idea had been a disaster. All his friends except Gee Belcher had left the village. He didn’t want to travel abroad, not alone. His parents were in London during the week. Sarah, his girlfriend, had left for university at Durham. His father paid him an allowance but it wasn’t much and so he’d got a summer job with the council, filling holes in the road. He’d made friends, the wrong kind of friends, and stayed on when winter came. He’d get into Lynn by bus, or if he could he’d borrow Rod Belcher’s car, the BMW. They’d sus out likely cars, drink enough to overcome the fear they’d be caught, then pile in and drive out here to Kimbolton’s. Never before seven, the only rule, and cash in hand:?100 per vehicle — any vehicle. They never knew what happened to them but it was easy to guess: there was a paint shed,

Valentine noted that the mechanic had stopped welding and was now on a mobile phone.

‘They gave us the cash in an envelope. Twenties, always twenties. Then we had to go back and wait by the office for a lift into town. That was it, every time.’

The snow was heavier now, settling on the lawyer’s cashmere coat. There was a partly wrecked bus parked by the leylandii — a double?decker, its windows out. Shaw led them on board and they sat on the stiff icy seats. It was out of the snow but somehow colder, like sitting in a fridge.

Draper told them what had happened that night on Siberia Belt. He’d stolen a car, got caught on Siberia Belt, panicked when the police arrived and fled the scene. One unexpected detail. Draper might have stuck it out for longer that night, but he said he’d recognized Sarah Baker?Sibley. He said she always picked her daughter up from the discos at Burnham Thorpe. It was a small world, he said. That was the problem with growing up in it.

The interview was, as Shaw had suspected, a depressing dead?end. He let Valentine take over the questions while he rang St James’s and got put through to the car?crime unit. They’d need to check out every wreck on the yard before the management had time to cover their tracks.

Valentine was shivering now, holding his raincoat to his thin neck. ‘That night — how’d you get home?’ he asked.

‘In the snow? I got down to the coast road… I fell

‘You memorize that?’ asked Valentine, offering him a smoke.

Draper looked at his lawyer, then the Silk Cut, then took one. ‘I don’t need to. I can’t forget numbers — not once I’ve seen them.’ Shaw recalled Parlour’s description of the teenage driver of the Mondeo on Siberia Belt; the T?shirt logo Pi is God.

‘Why’d you take the steering?wheel cover with you when you stole the car?’ asked Shaw, taking an interest now, realizing that Valentine had been right to probe.

‘I didn’t have gloves,’ he admitted. ‘I’d been along for the ride before, nicking cars. But they said this one was mine. That way I got the money — all the money. I didn’t want to leave any prints. I used my T?shirt when I opened the door.’

Draper smoked the cigarette cupped in his hand. ‘We don’t need to go to the station,’ said Shaw. Barrett nodded, catching his client’s eye with a wink.

‘I think you’ve been honest with me, Sebastian,’ said Shaw.

‘Seb,’ he said, then bit his lip.

‘Seb,’ said Shaw. Valentine jiggled his dice key ring. But Shaw hadn’t finished. Something about Seb Draper intrigued him. He wondered what it was like to have the kind of brain that couldn’t forget a number.

‘Seb, we’re trying to find out what really happened out there on that road on Monday night. You know what we found?’

‘That’s right. We think he was part of a plan to divert the traffic off the road. Mrs Baker?Sibley’s daughter was abducted that night — while she was stranded out on Siberia Belt.’

Draper’s mouth opened to reveal perfect dentistry.

‘I just need you to tell me precisely what happened,’ said Shaw. ‘You’re good with details, Seb — that’s what we want. That’s where the devil is, right? You left Gayton in the Mondeo when?’

‘Five. Five past. I left the BMW under the trees by the gate to The Walks. Outside number 56. I drove out towards Hunstanton — I took the old road ’cos it’s always quieter. I got behind another car at the lights at Castle Rising. I kept my distance after that, ’cos, like, I didn’t want some stupid shunt on the road. You need to keep it simple, nicking cars — no accidents.’

Barrett was looking at his client, his eyes hardening.

‘I saw lights ahead turning down onto the sea wall. I got to the diversion sign, so I turned too. The lights were ahead, moving away from me. By the time I got round the corner the lights were ahead of me again — but they’d stopped.’

Shaw nodded. ‘So you’d followed the same car from the lights at Castle Rising, to the turning, and then down the causeway until you came to a stop?’

‘Well. Yeah. But that’s an assumption right? For you. Not for me.’

‘Why not for you?’

He didn’t laugh because he wasn’t joking, and Shaw felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He thought about it. ‘Because if you hadn’t noticed the registration number and the make of the car it didn’t have to be the same vehicle?’

‘Yeah — I lost sight of it twice. Once on the coast road, and then when it went round the corner on the causeway.’

‘Because in the time it was out of sight it might have pulled off the road, and another one pulled out to take its place?”

‘That’s it,’ said Draper.

Out of the mouths of babes… thought Shaw. He pictured the scene that night on Siberia Belt, able at last to see the events unfolding, creating the puzzle which they’d been unable to break. Until now.

‘Here,’ said Shaw, tapping on the windscreen of the Mazda. Valentine pulled the car over where Siberia Belt met the track to Gallow Marsh Farm. Shaw kicked open the passenger door. The snow had stopped and the red disc of the sun was setting between banks of cloud the colour of theatre curtains. The air temperature was falling like a hailstone. It felt good, standing on the bank, now that he thought he knew what had happened that night.

He had to see if it worked on the ground, in the real world. So they’d come straight to Siberia Belt from Kimbolton’s yard. En route St James’s had radioed Valentine. They’d got a call at 3.30 that afternoon. One of Izzy Dereham’s farm labourers had been walking down to check the oyster cages in the sea when he’d seen something in the dyke — metallic, floating in the tidal wash from the beach. DC Twine had told them to leave whatever it was, and wait for Shaw and Valentine. A fire?brigade hazardous materials unit was on its way too — just in case they needed specialist handling gear.

‘Could be what killed chummy in the raft,’ said Valentine, as the wind thudded against the offside of the Mazda. He wanted to get up to the farm, check out what they’d found in the dyke, get back to the station. What he didn’t want to do was get out of the car.

Shaw walked back to the turn in the road, then round the corner, leaving Valentine shivering in the wind. Once out of sight of Valentine Shaw could see down to the coast road; a bus lurching towards Lynn. Then he retraced his steps until he could see the Mazda again, and beyond it the rest of Siberia Belt, and the spot where the pine had been felled that Monday night.

‘Check it, check it, check it…’ said Valentine under his breath, annoyed at being kept out of the loop. He felt the damp insinuating its way down his throat and into his lungs, so he coughed, a deep hollow boom, like a goose. Shaw was upbeat, excited, but he hadn’t shared whatever the good news was.

Shaw walked back. He stood still, then spun round, taking in the circular horizon of water, marsh and trees. He’d got it clear in his head now, and it made sense; at last, it made sense. He clapped his hands and listened to the echo ricochet off the farm buildings at Gallow Marsh.

‘OK — the kid was annoying,’ said Shaw. They stood together, looking out to sea. ‘But bright. And he was right, George. We’ve made assumptions. We’ve assumed, and all the drivers have assumed, that the vehicles they followed round this bend were the vehicles they found when they got round this bend.’

‘I guess,’ said Valentine. He didn’t see what difference it made.

A marsh bird made a noise like a 1950s football rattle.

‘Two things are possible,’ said Shaw. ‘One of the

Valentine spat in the snow. ‘Well that clears things up.’

‘Yes, it does.’ Shaw beamed. ‘I reckon we’re pretty close, George — pretty close. The jigsaw’s almost finished.’ He smiled the surfer’s smile.

‘So what shape’s the missing bit?’ asked Valentine, acutely aware that the ‘we’ didn’t appear to include him.

‘I’m not absolutely sure, but it’s got four wheels.’

Snow lay across the yard at Gallow Marsh, marred by tyre tracks, straw laid out in the worst of the ruts. The hazmat unit had beaten them to it, and was parked in the entrance to the barn, out of the wind. A blue light flashed, shadows dancing round the high rafters within. They walked past it and out through a pair of double doors on the far side. There was another yard here, bounded on one side by a deep arrow?straight dyke running towards the sea. A broken harrow stood rusting in frosted weeds, and a pile of sugar beet gave off a stench of damp earth. Two farmhands stood smoking in the half?light, standing on the snowy bank a hundred yards down towards the beach. Closer, three men stood in full protective gear, looking at mobile phones.

The dyke was a gullet of shadow about twenty feet across, the surface ten feet below them. The sound of water churning filled the dusk as the tide pushed in, swamping the banks of reeds and grass. One of the hazmat team produced a heavy?duty torch and scanned the dark channel below.

‘She’s here somewhere; I found it earlier,’ he said. A corner of bright unpainted metal stuck up in midstream, the edge of a box, perhaps, an angle of reflective steel.

‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘When you’re ready.’

‘Right. But we think this might be dangerous, yes?’

The firemen began to unload a winch from the unit, a set of boat hooks. Valentine let the burst of flame at the end of a match warm his spirits as he lit a cigarette. This was tying up a loose end. They were making progress, and it felt good. Sunset soon, and then back to the city. The canteen at St James’s did a roast on Sunday nights. He’d read the papers, then watch the live match on Sky at the Artichoke. It was the best week’s work he’d done in ten years. Yes, it made him feel very good. It made him feel like a human being again.

One of the farmhands came up to Shaw; a teenager, swaddled against the cold, stamping his feet. ‘Izzy said if we found anything we should get her first, but the kid’s not well — flu, she reckons — so we thought we’d ring you lot.’ They all stood back as a fireman in waders began to edge down the bank with a hook.

‘Thanks, it might be important,’ said Shaw. He scanned the horizon, trying not to look in the water, wondering what the chances were that whatever had come ashore that Monday night was still alive.

The fireman expertly snagged the metal triangle, then attached a chain back to the winch. The engine squealed, the chain tightened, water droplets flying off, and then whatever it was in mid?stream got sucked off the muddy bed of the dyke. Suddenly it was there beneath them, on the grass bank.

‘Well that’s solved that mystery,’ said Shaw.

It was an AA diversion sign. Black lettering on a yellow background. Green weed, black under the light, knotted around one of the metal legs.

The door to the farmhouse was on the latch, the hallway warm, full of shadows. Upstairs they could hear a child’s voice, Izzy Dereham’s comforting murmur running in counterpoint. Valentine shouted up that they were there, that they needed to talk. She said she’d be a minute, so they sat in the kitchen by what was left of a log fire, watching the clock creep towards six. Three rabbits, a hare and a brace of pigeon hung gutted from a rafter. She must be good with a gun, thought Shaw, and imagined her out on the marsh, the birds wheeling over her head. There was a child’s drawing pinned to the door — a black cat again, on a raft at sea. Shaw walked to the window and shivered. Outside the clouds had finally closed over Gallow Marsh. The night snow was sporadic, in the wind.

When she appeared in the kitchen she seemed distracted, harassed. She considered taking the rocking chair by the Aga, but stood instead, leaning against the warm rail.

‘Detective Inspector. Sergeant.’ She tried to find pockets for her hands but gave up the struggle. She wore heavy?duty boots, green canvas trousers, a smock in blue, blotched with chemical stains.

‘We found something in the ditch.’

She crossed her arms.

‘The AA diversion sign. We wondered where it had

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘Was it just for the money?’ He looked round the kitchen. ‘The lease is up next year? Things must be tough. And then John Holt turns up on the doorstep one day — bringing a present for his godchild?’

She looked at her feet. Shaw thought how it was always little lies and omissions that were the real clues to guilt. Valentine got out his notebook and began to scribble a note.

‘Holt’s got your daughter’s picture at his daughter’s house. Bit like that one…’ Shaw nodded at the snapshot framed on the wall.

She shrugged. ‘John’s my uncle. It’s not a crime, is it? I’m a Holt too — I kept Pat’s name after he died. It’s all there was.’

Shaw braced both hands around his knee. ‘You’ve been formally interviewed about the events here on Siberia Belt — you didn’t mention the connection. Neither did he. What was there to hide?’

She ran her wrist across her lips and Shaw could see the rhythmic tremble in the fingers. Water began to pump out of her eyes and she grabbed a chair, the legs scraping horribly on the cork tiles.

‘Your parents lost their farm, didn’t they?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she said, her head dropping. ‘Dad couldn’t take it — he killed himself, in the car with a pipe to the exhaust. I was seven. Uncle John helped Mum for a while, but it was no good. We gave it up.’

‘And then it looked like it might happen again. Your

The line of her mouth broke, a sudden flush in her face squeezing out the tears, fully formed, like a child’s crystal beads. ‘It wasn’t a crime,’ she said, throwing her head back. ‘No one was going to get hurt.’

Shaw winced at the cliche, because it was never true. ‘John said James Baker?Sibley owned Shark Tooth — and Shark Tooth owned Gallow Marsh. I’d get a year, rent free, time to get back on top of things.’ She stood suddenly, pacing the kitchen. ‘All I had to do was put the sign out at the right moment, then fetch it back in. They had to do it on Siberia Belt because there’s no phone signal — and it’s the only spot on her route that’s remote enough. It’s always her route — that was something else I had to do, down on the coast road, I timed her each Monday for a month. Five o’clock, a few minutes either way. She never missed.’

She went to the mantelpiece over the fire. There was a family picture, framed in black wood; she turned it face down.

‘It wasn’t the only…’ Shaw searched for the right word, ‘enterprise you were involved in, was it? You were already working for Colin Narr, helping get his smuggled merchandise ashore. The light on the dovecote to guide the boat in. Did they bring the stuff here?’

She nodded. Valentine scribbled.

‘I didn’t have a choice. Narr said he’d make it his business to push for the rent arrears on the farm. Get me Skolt — over to Ostend. It was always timed so that they could slide back in to Lynn on a tide at dusk. They’d get in close — using the light on the barn — then drop the raft for the last few hundred yards. It’d be dark by then. I’d meet Terry down on the sands, stow the raft by the oyster beds, bring the stuff back here. Terry always had a lift waiting, up on Siberia Belt.

‘He was due Sunday. The day after the consignment comes ashore Narr’s men are always out on the delivery run — it’s the only day I know they won’t be here. That’s why we timed Siberia Belt for the Monday — we knew the coast would be clear. But first Terry didn’t appear, then you turned up looking for the drums. It was a nightmare, but we couldn’t stop it happening.’

She rubbed her hands on the skin of her cheeks. ‘We just had to keep our nerve. The plan was too complicated to ditch. If we wanted to get her off the road, and out of mobile contact, it had to be that night. Mr Baker?Sibley was ready as well, and the tides were right for him to sail before dawn.’

‘Take me through what happened,’ said Shaw.

‘We met here first — me, Uncle John, and Harvey Ellis. Harvey was sick with worry over that kid of his.’

‘Jake,’ said Shaw.

‘Harvey put the pick?up truck in the barn out of sight and we sat in the cab, going through it all one last time.’

‘What time was this?’ asked Shaw.

She shrugged, and Shaw noticed that her eyes had lost

Apples, thought Shaw.

‘Harvey was in a bad way. Nervous. He was sick, throwing up, shaking. He said he couldn’t do it. We said he had to. John said it was too important to all of us. And no one was going to get hurt. Then they drove down to Siberia Belt in the pick?up — the two of them.’

The key. At last. Shaw sat back: ‘So Harvey Ellis’s van was already parked up on Siberia Belt — he didn’t arrive there with the rest of the convoy?’

‘That’s right. They were going to switch the plugs — fake a breakdown. That’s why John went: Ellis said he couldn’t do it on his own. I guess they took the tree down to make sure. They were pretty nervous. Then John came back. Things were OK then — I could see it was going to be all right. John said he’d talked Ellis round, that once he was out in position he’d calmed down. Then it was our turn to get in place. When I got the van down to the junction just here by the farm I could see Ellis standing by the pick?up out on Siberia Belt — he waved. That’s the last time I ever saw him.’

Shaw nodded. The confession had been smooth, almost effortless. Too smooth?

‘Then?’ asked Valentine.

‘It was simple, really. We got in position on the coast road in a lay?by. When Baker?Sibley’s Alfa went past John had to stay behind her, I got in front. When I reached Siberia Belt I had time to drop off the sign, then drive back here.’

‘So Sarah Baker?Sibley followed your lights up the track?’ him there, all the way from Castle Rising.’

The wings of a gull scuffed at the window and left a feathered imprint in the ice.

Izzy Dereham jumped at the noise. ‘When I saw a few more cars go past at the junction I walked down, on the far side of the trees, and dragged the sign in. We needed to keep Baker?Sibley there for an hour — that was the deal. If she’d tried to reverse John was going to put his back wheels over the ditch and keep her in. But the snowstorm made it easier. We knew she was trapped for hours.’

Valentine closed his notebook. ‘But when you and John Holt left the farm Harvey Ellis was alive?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And alone?’

‘No.’ She turned to Shaw. ‘It wasn’t just the three of us. There was a fourth: someone to put the sign out at the other end of Siberia Belt. He was going to meet Harvey at the pick?up — just to double?check everything was OK. When I drove off there were two figures out on the track. John said this other man had planned the whole thing, and sorted the money side, but he wouldn’t tell me his name. All he said was that he was James Baker?Sibley’s man. His eyes and ears — that’s what he said. Baker?Sibley’s eyes and ears.’

They stood on the pavement outside the Artichoke in the steadily falling snow, Valentine using his mobile. Tom Hadden was in the Ark; he’d pick them up in ten minutes to run them to Sly’s houseboat. Duncan Sly — ‘the eyes and ears’ of James Baker?Sibley, and before that of his father. They’d need uniform back?up. Shaw and Valentine had got scalding tea from the late?night burger van parked opposite the pub. Under a canvas awning they’d reduced the investigation to its stark core: if Izzy Dereham was telling the truth, the only person who could have killed Harvey Ellis was Duncan Sly. If she was telling the truth.

Valentine stood in the snow, his head sunk low on his shoulders so that the collar of the raincoat kept the back of his neck warm.

Shaw tried to call up an image of the boot mark they’d found in the bloodstain on Siberia Belt. Heavy duty, with a steel toecap, and the fern leaf burnt into the heel. It wasn’t Holt’s footprint, so was it Sly’s? They needed to turn over the houseboat, find the boots. The footprint was the only physical forensic evidence that could put the killer on the spot. They had to trace it.

The snow was making little drifts on Shaw’s shoulders as he stood under the swinging pub sign. He’d never really looked at the picture before: a gardener leaning on a spade, a line of artichokes still to be cut, a floppy white

Shaw looked a long time at the boots.

‘I’ll catch up with you at St James’s, George’ he said suddenly, the excitement in his voice as audible as the snow was silent. ‘I’ve got to check something out. Take Sly carefully, then bring him in to the station. Secure the site, leave the rest to Tom. The important thing is getting in the door before he’s got a chance to destroy anything. Boots, clothing. I’ll meet you at St James’s.’

Valentine nodded, trying to see it as a vote of confidence, but knowing he was being cut out of something.

Hadden arrived in the CSI van with two uniformed PCs for back?up, and as they pulled away Valentine could see Shaw still looking up at the swinging sign of the Artichoke.

The streets of Lynn were empty, snow settling despite the salt. A neon kebab?house sign pulsed on Norfolk Street, the gyro inside turning as a man sliced off the cooked meat. They pulled up at Boal Quay and Valentine led the way to the footpath which ran to the houseboat jetty. The communal fire still burnt, despite the falling snow, but there was no one tending the flames. Valentine went aboard Sly’s boat with Hadden and one of the uniformed PCs, the other skirted the hull of the boat, up on its blocks, round to the far side.

Valentine didn’t have to knock. Sly opened the double wooden hatchway, blinking into Hadden’s torch. He stood in his pants, nothing else, his skin as white as lard except where he couldn’t cover it up on the sands — the hands

‘Jesus! What…?’ asked Sly, covering his eyes with a hand as if he were looking out to sea.

‘Mr Sly? We’d like a word, and to look around.’

Sly looked back into the houseboat. Valentine sniffed, the cold air making his sinuses flood. ‘Or I can be back with a warrant in ten minutes.’ He’d give him one more chance, then they’d force a way through. Sod the warrant.

Sly didn’t move, but seemed to settle on his feet. Hadden opened his CSI bag and pulled on gloves. ‘I need to look around,’ he said, not waiting for Sly to give him permission. Valentine stamped the snow off his boots on the bare floorboards and led the way.

‘Like I’ve got a choice,’ said Sly.

‘You’ll need some clothes and a coat, sir. We have a car.’ There was a strong smell in the room but Valentine’s nose was blocked: peat perhaps, smoked fish?

‘Now? This is crazy,’ said Sly. ‘I’ve told you I’d nothing to do with James’s murder.’

Valentine, suddenly tired, felt sorry for Duncan Sly, so he decided to cut it short, spell things out. ‘Mr Sly. We’re going down to St James’s. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s got nothing to do with his murder. We understand you were on Siberia Belt the night Harvey

Sly stepped back again, and the single unshaded light bulb threw his face into relief. Valentine examined a large print of the Battle of Jutland on the wall. He thought what a defeat it must be, to end your life alone in a rotting houseboat, surrounded by the stench of tidal mud, when your dream was to be at sea.

Hadden was below decks, opening drawers, cupboards. The uniformed PC hovered. ‘Can you get some clothes on, sir — we need to go,’ said Valentine.

Sly stood his ground and Valentine wondered if they’d interrupted something. He walked to the sink. A box of firelighters stood on the shelf with a bottle of detergent, and the bowl had a black tidemark around it, a nail brush lying in the scurf.

Valentine turned quickly and caught Sly with his hands over his face. He took them away quickly and, realizing they were wet, he looked at his fingertips as if the water were blood.

‘I didn’t kill Ellis,’ he said.

Valentine treated him to a blank stare. ‘Fine. We’ll take your word for it, shall we?’

Sly clenched then unclenched his fists.

‘It’s a tidy boat you’ve got alongside,’ said Valentine. ‘No more cockle?picking with scum on the sands, right? A bit of dignity, freedom. But at a price.’ Valentine looked round the cabin, then up at the roof where a wooden patch had been nailed up to keep the old boat weather?proof. ‘Perhaps it was worth killing for,’ he said. He put a cigarette between his teeth but left it unlit.

Frustrated, Valentine turned on Sly. ‘What happened — did you argue about money? Did Ellis want a share of yours? Did he want you to sort it? Because you could, couldn’t you — with James — your mate, the boss?’

‘That’s tosh. Jesus!’ But Sly didn’t move.

Valentine took a deep breath, a collarbone creaking as his shoulders rose. ‘Just get dressed, sir. Now.’

Valentine went to the hatchway and called in the second uniformed PC, who was standing at the landward end of the gangplank. ‘Accompany Mr Sly below please, Constable — he needs clothes, an overnight bag.’

Sly reluctantly went down, a cat passing him on the steps coming up. It brushed itself against Valentine’s black slip?ons, then made a figure of eight between his feet.

By the time Sly was ready Hadden had six pairs of shoes and boots lined up on a plastic sheet. Two pairs had steel toecaps. But he still hadn’t got a match.

‘I take it you found some footprints,’ said Sly.

‘Just one,’ said Valentine. ‘Under the security van in the convoy of cars on Siberia Belt. But a deep one — because Harvey Ellis’s killer was loading his body into the pickup’s cab, and he was standing in a pool of Ellis’s blood which had melted the frozen soil.’ Valentine watched Sly’s eyes, looking for signs of fear or confusion. ‘Once the body was in the van my guess is it was pushed forward to the pine tree — but those footprints couldn’t dent the

‘If we’re lucky,’ said Hadden, unhappy with Valentine’s methods: the hectoring, the implied menace.

‘Why would I kill Harvey Ellis?’ said Sly.

Valentine rolled the cigarette between his lips, tasting tobacco. ‘Because he wouldn’t do his job. And you worked out that he could do it just as well dead as alive.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Sly.

‘No?’ said Valentine. ‘Let’s go and hear what it was really like, shall we?’ He nodded at the PC: ‘I think we should cuff this one.’

The officer put Sly’s muscled arms behind him and handcuffed his hands. Valentine was rewarded with a look of undiluted hatred.

Valentine swayed slightly on his feet, enjoying the moment. They’d find the boots. And if they didn’t, they’d find blood. If Sly had struck the fatal blow then they’d find blood. Perhaps, he thought, there’d be time for the house on Greenland Street. The thought of the fan?tan table made his pulse pick up so that he nearly missed it, nearly proved for the last time that his career was over. But there was something about that smell, the smokiness.

He filled his lungs. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘The fire.’ He threw open the double hatch doors, clattered down the steps and ran to the smouldering wood and rubbish, stumbling through the mud, splashing through the stagnant salt water. The heavy snow had almost put it out, the flakes sizzling in the embers.

He pulled out some wood, a branch, as Hadden joined him.

‘Got the fucker,’ said Valentine.

Shaw unlocked the filing cabinet in the incident room and took out John Holt’s file. The wad of scene?of?crime pictures was comprehensive. Holt’s Corsa, interior, exter ior, boot. And a black?and?white shot of the cast taken from his shoes. Slip?ons, like George’s, with a crisscross tread and diamond motif on the heel.

‘Distinctive…’ said Shaw, to himself.

The building was silent, even the drunks in the cells were quiet.

He pulled out the file on the footprint found under the security van by Tom Hadden’s team. A boot, the steel toecap wide, the sole a grid?iron of raised squares, cracked and fissured with age, the imprint of the burnt?in fern, like a signature. Whoever had worn that boot had stood in Ellis’s warm blood.

He re?read Holt’s statement. He’d been on an errand that night, to his daughter’s house, to cut back the magnolia tree that was knocking on his granddaughter’s window. Shaw had seen him finishing the job when they’d called at Blickling Cottages: he recalled the gardener’s jacket, the gloves and the heavy?duty boots. Holt had said the police had just given his kit back from the Corsa.

Shaw went back to Holt’s file. Each car had been given a thorough forensic examination and each had a detailed inventory. Shaw read the one for the Corsa. The list for A-Z of Britain, a directory of builders’ merchants in north Norfolk, two old copies of the Lynn News, both open and folded at local football reports. On the back seat a pot plant, a hyacinth, listed simply as ‘gift’. A hatchback, so the list moved on to the large boot. A length of synthetic rope, a child’s kite with a Mickey Mouse design, and a holdall, with zip, containing ‘gardening kit’.

He rang Tom Hadden. The CSI senior investigator answered on the second ring. Breathless, the rhythmic thud of a heavy bag.

‘Sorry, Tom — you can talk?’

‘Yeah. There’s a fire out near the houseboats, we’re just checking it out. Some clothing, a shoe perhaps.’

‘Tom. The night the convoy got stuck in the snow. Who took the inventories for the vehicles — specifically Holt’s Corsa?’

Hadden left a beat. ‘Er. Phil Timms. One of my best. Why?’

‘I need to ask him a question — can I ring?’

Hadden gave him a number. Shaw rang. He let it ring ten times, waited a minute, rang again. Third ring it picked up.

‘Hello? Phil Timms.’

The voice was thick, the acoustics muffled, Shaw guessed by bedclothes.

‘It’s DI Shaw, Phil. Look, I’m sorry, Tom gave me the number.’

‘No, no problem. Go on.’

In the background Shaw heard heavy footsteps, a door

‘You did the inventories on the car contents at Ingol Beach?’

‘Right,’ said Timms. ‘That was me.’

‘John Holt’s Corsa. You list a holdall containing gardening kit. What constitutes gardening kit, Phil?’

There was a long silence, and Shaw imagined him sitting on the side of the bed, trying to focus, trying to recall the details of a night a week earlier that seemed like a career ago.

‘Trowel, hand fork, secateurs — you know, junk really. Oh, gloves, gardening gloves.’

Shaw willed himself not to interrupt.

‘A torch — heavy?duty torch. Sorry, sir, I should have listed them. It was just we were looking for bloodstains, anything with blood… and there was nothing like that, nothing.’

First mistake, thought Shaw. He shouldn’t have been looking for anything. Looking for anything was a good way to miss something.

‘And boots,’ said Timms, the voice suddenly dead. ‘Steel toecaps, battered. Yup — that’s it, right — boots. I didn’t think. Sorry.’

Shaw winced. The English language’s most overrated word.

‘OK. Can you ring Tom — tell him what happened? They’re on a job right now at Boal Quay. When they can, they need to get over to Old Hunstanton, Blickling Cottages. DS Valentine knows the address — he’s with Tom. If these boots haven’t been destroyed then that’s

‘Sir.’

‘Tell them I’ll get a warrant for Holt’s properties. I’ll meet them there.’

He rang the number for the night?duty judge. Mr Justice Lamprey. A big house, a hobby farm, out on the silt fens at Wiggenhall St Germans, where the river cut under the walls of the old church. He’d be ready in an hour. Shaw needed to bring the paperwork for signature.

Shaw took out his mobile and swore. He’d left it off in his pocket, and when he turned it on it buzzed like a bluebottle. He scrolled to his inbox. He’d missed a message, an hour earlier.

STOP

Just that. He rang the number back and it rang just once before it picked up.

‘’Ello.’ The voice was loud, stressed.

‘Hi. This is DI Peter Shaw, King’s Lynn CID. You rang me an hour ago — I’m sorry, I don’t understand the text you sent.’

‘It’s not my phone,’ said the voice, then he heard a series of bangs as if it had been dropped, then the voice again, out of breath. ‘It’s Giddy’s.’

Giddy Poynter’s phone? ‘Where is he?’ asked Shaw. ‘In the bathroom, but I can’t get the door open.’

‘You’re a friend?’

‘Not really. Flat next door. Did you say police?’

‘We need you. Some bastard’s put glue in the locks on the front doors. I’ve just had the carpenter round to let us out — twenty?eight fucking quid. We looked at Giddy’s and they’d done his too — so the chippy cut his lock out.’

‘OK — look, I’ll pop round. Just stay put. Wallflower House, right?’

Shaw ran down the back stairs and out into the yard to the Land Rover. Wallflower House was on the London Road, a fifties block on blighted ground beyond the city gate; a two?minute drive.

Frederick Armitage, the neighbour, introduced himself. He was wearing a jumper and running pants. He’d be sixty, wiry, the hair a wodge set at an angle, as if he’d just taken his head off the pillow.

‘That’s mine,’ he said, nodding at an open door. ‘This is Giddy’s.’ The door had been thrown back. The flat had a single living room in which Giddy had put one chair — wicker, with a cushion. A footstool lay on its side by the wall. There was nothing else except a TV, flat?screen, a pile of DVD games and a chessboard set on a tea crate.

Armitage took him down a short corridor to the bathroom door.

‘Giddy?’ said Shaw, shaking the handle. He turned to Armitage. ‘What makes you think he’s in there?’

‘We heard him come in. At midnight. It’s always midnight. Then out at three, back at five normally. He fishes at night, down off the Millfleet. Then out at six. That’s Giddy. Clockwork.’

He thudded his fist on the chipboard. ‘Giddy!’

‘He’s not deaf,’ said Armitage, stepping back.

Shaw put his shoulder to the door and the hinges popped, screws lifting almost effortlessly clear of rotten wood. A toilet, the lid down, a washbasin, spotless, a shower unit with the curtain pulled back to reveal tiles in alternate black and white. A window stood open, a fire?escape beyond. He hesitated, just one second, before checking the bath. Spotless, empty.

‘Nowt,’ said Armitage.

As they walked back into the main room the front door creaked, a second hinge working its way loose, so that it began to swing into the room, revealing the hooks on the back.

Giddy was hanging from one of them, a piece of electrical flex round his neck. His toes, in socks, brushed the lino as the wood groaned with the weight. His face was distorted by the broken neck, one side compressed into a series of folds. The dove?grey eyes were open.

‘Giddy,’ said Shaw, moving forward, knowing it was too late. ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said, pulling up the discarded footstool and lifting Giddy’s body clear of the hook, then laying it down. It was as light as a child’s, and Shaw couldn’t stop himself pressing it briefly to his chest. He knew it was pointless but he checked the pulse at the neck anyway, massaged the heart. The arms were still flexible, the joints free. He’d been dead an hour, maybe less.

Armitage stood his ground, beginning to shiver in his

But had it been suicide? Had a random act of vandalism pushed him over the edge? Had Giddy locked the bathroom door to keep someone out? Shaw searched the flat looking for a note. Giddy was convinced he was being followed. Had someone seen him talking to Shaw in the churchyard at St Martin’s? But he’d said he’d been followed before that. Or had an imaginary enemy become a real one?

Shaw didn’t step into the bedroom, but viewed it from the threshold, the interior lit by the hall light. A single bed, and no other furniture; but this had been Giddy’s special place: the walls were painted sea green up to head height, sky blue above, the horizon encircling the bed, the two windows open. But Giddy’s glory was the ceiling: night?black, scattered across it hundreds, thousands of children’s homework stars in silver. Constellations had jostled over Giddy’s head.

He heard an ambulance siren and walked back into the living room. Now that Giddy’s body was on the floor Shaw could see the letterbox. There was something caught in the flap. He walked to it, knelt down and felt his skin goosebump. He slipped on a glove and pulled it clear. It was a rat’s tail.

By the time Shaw reached Blickling Cottages with the search warrant one of Tom Hadden’s CSI units was parked in the lane by the sports field. The windows of the house were as dark as sockets in a skull. Shaw got out, the snow creaking underfoot. But the wind from the sea had lost its polar edge. The snowflakes were fat, spidery, falling lazily like leaves.

He’d left the duty DI from St James’s at the scene of Giddy Poynter’s untimely death. He hadn’t had time to fill him in on the background to the case but he urged caution: it might look like a lonely and desperate suicide but the rat’s tail had unnerved Shaw. It was too pointed a reminder of Giddy’s childhood nightmare. Had Giddy been deliberately driven to his death? He remembered Giddy’s fear, the figure stalking him from the shadows. Shaw left as quickly as he could, promising a witness statement when he got back to the station. Giddy’s corpse had left at the same time, a life reduced to an anonymous black body?bag, shuffled into the back of a silent ambulance.

Headlights swept across the football field and settled on the front of Blickling Cottages. Valentine’s Mazda rumbled along the lane at a steady 10 mph. His overcoat flapped at his knees when he got out but he didn’t seem unhappy to be in the fresh air. He smoked a cigarette

‘There was a fire by the boat,’ he said, looking Shaw in the eyes. ‘Tom got to it before it was cold. Snowfall had saved a bit. Material — looks like a set of blue overalls. They’re stained. Tom says it’s definitely blood. In fact the material’s soaked in it, and a belt. He’s doing a type test now. He’s got the stuff back at the Ark. And we can link Sly with the fire — there’s ash in the boat, round the sink, on his hands.’

‘Boots?’

‘In the fire too. But there’s not enough to get a footprint.’

‘What’s he said?’ asked Shaw, trying to keep the inquiry balanced, trying not to let it turn into a lynching.

‘Fuck all, really.’ Valentine watched the smoke drain out of his nostrils into the night air. ‘Denies killing Ellis. He wants his lawyer.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘That they didn’t go out on the sands on Monday — tides were wrong. Spent most of the day on his fishing boat down on the Boal, overhauling the engine. Says he didn’t see anyone. Says he doesn’t do friends. Bitter man, seems to think life owes him something.’

‘Might he kill to get it?’

Valentine pinched out his cigarette and put it in his raincoat pocket. ‘Yup.’ He smiled, holding Shaw’s gaze. ‘What’s the hurry here?’

‘Holt had a spare pair of boots in the back of the Corsa out on Siberia Belt. Steel toecaps. We need to find

Shaw told the CSI team to wait while they woke the family. Valentine knocked, the double rap bouncing back off the distant white pavilion beyond the football pitch: snow clung to its cupola domes, but the roof was clear, icicles hanging along the gutter.

In the cottage lights came on, one by one, voices in the hallway before the letterbox opened.

‘Who’s that?’

‘DI Shaw, Mr Holt. And DS Valentine.’

Shaw shone his torch on the newly painted door. They could see the scratch marks now, despite the layers of paint; a perfect replica of the symbol etched into the side of the car. Holt opened the door on a chain. ‘It’s four o’clock in the morning.’

‘Sir. I have a warrant for these premises. Can you open the door?’

Holt had a camp bed by an open fire where logs burned, the winter?red flames reflected in ceramic tiles. Upstairs they could hear a child asking sleepy questions. Valentine walked quickly to the fire and used a poker to pick amongst the ashes.

‘Stay in bed,’ called Holt up the stairs. ‘Sasha’s upset,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘So I said I’d stay over. She likes that.’

The CSI team bustled, collecting shoes from the hallway.

‘They’re going to have to go upstairs, Mr Holt.’ Holt’s shoulder slumped and he sat on the edge of

‘What are they looking for?’ he said, adjusting the glasses. The eyes, magnified, were bloodshot and rheumy.

A spark flew from the fire. They both watched it turn to ash on the carpet.

‘Mr Holt,’ said Shaw. ‘You and I and DS Valentine are going back to St James’s. We’ve been talking to Izzy Dereham. Your niece. So you’ll need an overnight bag.’

Holt’s face crumpled and he rested it in his hands. ‘Can I get dressed? I’d like to walk for a while, could we? I’d like the air before we go to the station.’

‘All right,’ said Shaw. ‘Five minutes, Mr Holt — no more.’

They heard running steps on the stairs and Sasha burst in. She was laughing, but she stopped when she saw her grandfather’s face. Michelle Holt followed her in, and gathering her hand took her to sit in front of the open fire.

She looked at her father. ‘Dad?’ she said, the tears already flowing.

Holt stood. ‘I need to dress. I’d like some privacy. Take Sasha to bed, Micky. Now.’ She lifted his granddaughter up and carried her out. Shaw and Valentine waited out in the snow.

‘George, do me a favour,’ said Shaw. ‘That sports pavilion.’ He nodded across the snowy football field.

‘What about it?’

‘Why’s there no snow on the roof?’

Valentine shrugged. ‘It fell off?’

Valentine set out on what he clearly judged to be a fool’s errand, his shoulders hunched against the damp.

Shaw went back to the Mazda and used the radio to check with the murder room. Hadden had phoned through some preliminary results from Gallow Marsh — no joy on Izzy Dereham’s boots, but her teeth matched the apple from Ellis’s pick?up exactly.

Holt appeared wearing a full?length beltless overcoat, which looked new. They trudged down the cleared path to the lane and through the gateway into the playing fields. The snow was a foot deep, reflecting the cold light of the stars.

‘The wood’s a good walk,’ said Holt, setting off uphill towards a line of dark, leafless trees. The stars overhead brightened as they got away from the CSI lights. Holt walked stiffly, his breath coming hard.

‘We know what happened that night on Siberia Belt, Mr Holt,’ said Shaw, his footsteps crunching now on the twigs beneath the trees. ‘Izzy Dereham has made a full statement. Sly organized it — recruited you and Harvey Ellis. You knew each other through football, right? You run the club here — and Harvey Ellis played for the TA team. Did he bring his kids? Did they play with Sasha? And Duncan Sly runs the works team for Shark Tooth — Wootton Marsh. It’s the same league — I checked.’

Holt didn’t say he was wrong. The starlight lit the path ahead like crazy paving. ‘And then — the final piece of the jigsaw — you recruited Izzy.’

‘James Baker?Sibley was a rich man, and one who wanted his daughter at any cost. What did he promise you?’

‘He cleared the debts,’ said Holt, turning. ‘An interest?free loan. But it was a loan. And I’ll pay it back.’

‘Who to?’

The old man shrugged.

‘The real question,’ said Shaw, ‘is who killed Harvey Ellis. You were down there with him. He did lose his nerve, didn’t he? And you were all smart enough to realize that he could fulfil his part of the bargain just as well dead as alive. The body would be found — but so what? There was nothing to link him to you, to any of you.’

‘When I left him, Harvey was alive.’ Holt licked his lips. ‘We saw him waving as we came out of Gallow Marsh. But I’d told him it was dangerous — what he was doing, what he planned to do.’

Holt walked on and within a few hundred yards they emerged on the crest of the hill. Over by Blickling Cottages members of the CSI team were in the upstairs rooms, the curtains pulled back.

‘What was he going to do that was dangerous?’ said Shaw, recognizing that he’d been invited to ask the question. He reminded himself that Holt and Izzy were family. Sly was the outsider, the fixer, the boss’s man.

Holt spat, took an extra breath. ‘Some people are greedy once they get their snouts in the trough. Harvey was a fool. His children made him a fool, anyway, and

Shaw watched the last of the snowflakes falling, outsized and feathery. There was a wind up on the hill and it promised rain.

Holt laughed, adjusting the spectacles. ‘He said he’d put it to Duncan Sly, that he hadn’t realized the risks. He wanted ten thousand — double what we’d agreed. I left him about four thirty. He’d been in a mess all day, kept saying he was putting his arse on the line, whatever Duncan said, and he deserved a bigger cut. Harvey said if he got caught he’d be inside when Jake died. That’s what really freaked him out. That was the big risk, the only one he really cared about. But if he was taking it, he wanted paying for it.’

Holt’s top lip curled back to show the ill?fitting dentures, the first time Shaw had seen the old man sneer. ‘If Duncan didn’t promise him more he said he’d reverse back, take the sign down, stop her coming up the lane.’

Shaw took in a breath of the air, damp now. To the east dawn was bleeding into the sky.

‘I saw Duncan coming along Siberia Belt,’ said Holt. ‘He’d walked up from the far end. He had his car down there ready to put out the no?entry sign. I didn’t want to be there for that. Harvey was a weak man, I reckoned he’d toe the line. Duncan could switch the spark plugs. So I left them to it.’

Shaw imagined Ellis and Sly in the cab of the pick?up, dusk gathering, the toolbox between them, the young father delivering his threat.

Holt stood, shaking his head. ‘Harvey didn’t deserve to die like that. He loved that kid, all of his kids, and Jake most of all.’ He gazed out over the field. ‘He used to bring them to matches — they’re good kids, they deserve a father.’

He looked back at Blickling Cottages. ‘I couldn’t have done that, lived with that kid’s illness, knowing he was going to die, and not hating him for it.’

The rain was falling now, sheets of water like net curtains. They walked through the slush on the field. In the garden the carapace of snow had shrunk back, the dead stems of Brussels sprouts stuck through, the line of bricks which marked the path, a border of globe artichokes, the blackened fern?like leaves arching out of the snow and back to earth.

John Holt trudged to the door not looking back. Hadden stood on the step, gave Shaw a quick shake of the head — no boots.

Shaw stood his ground in the rain. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said to Holt.

Holt climbed the last two steps an old man. Shaw’s mobile beeped. A text from Valentine.

BLOOD AB

Shaw smiled. They had Sly now: they’d get a DNA match as well. He had the victim’s blood on his clothes. Ellis had threatened everything Sly wanted — his own boat, his own life, and freedom from a low?life existence

Shaw walked Holt to the squad car. Through the rough tweed material Shaw could feel the warmth within, the old man’s body over?heated by the exertion of the walk in the woods. Rain fell from clouds the colour of gunshot, behind which the day was breaking. Each drop left a miniature crater in the soft snow. The old man reached the car, and leant on the door for a second look back at Blickling Cottages, as if for the last time.

‘Wait,’ said Shaw to the police driver. ‘I’ll get George — we’ll follow you back.’

He checked his watch. Valentine had set out to check the sports pavilion half an hour ago. Where was he?

Shaw padded through the slush of the football pitch, thudding up the wooden steps to the veranda. In the silence he could hear his heart beating.

‘George! George!’ An echo bounced back off the hillside and some rooks clattered out of the winter branches.

But otherwise, silence. Shaw cupped his good eye against the window but could see only condensation within. The central double wooden doors were padlocked — the locks new, brass, and shiny. He noticed that one window had recently been replaced, the putty still white and unweathered.

‘George!’ He looked around. Something about the

‘George!’

Still nothing. He flicked a light switch but nothing happened. It was a kitchen, a utility sink, a hot?water urn, a row of mahogany?brown teapots. And a hatch, closed, but on the serving surface a set of plastic tubs and a measuring spoon, some heavy?duty mechanics’ gloves and several plastic dishes. He picked up one of the tubs and prised off the lid. Within, mealworms wriggled against each other, soft, translucent, the colour of pale butter. Overhead he could hear rainwater glugging in a drainpipe.

He crossed to the next door and pushed it open. The heat surrounded him like a duvet. A soft, wet heat. Despite the dawn the room was in shadow, and he stood motionless, letting his eyes change to night vision. Somewhere an electric motor hummed and a light came on — the light he’d seen that first day he’d come to Blickling Cottages — and he saw that it was on the control panel of a portable humidifier under the window. The open door behind him let in the cold air and he heard a thermostat clicking as an electric heater whirred on. Over his head fly?catchers hung from the wooden rafters, little sticky strips turning.

Shaw ran to him, turned his body over, then lit his face. He stepped back, almost falling, unable to control his leg muscles. On the bare skin of Valentine’s neck a spider the size of a small plate flexed one of its fur?lined legs. Its body was black and plump except for what looked like a circlet of white fur, like a jacket. Mandibles shivered where the mouth must have been, cleaning, extending, then folding away. The rest of the smashed box appeared empty, except for shards of glass and splinters of wood. Forcing himself to kneel again Shaw used his torch to brush the spider aside. It dropped lazily, with an audible thud, to the lino, and began to walk slowly towards the shadows by a raised stage, its movements arthritic, jerky. It paused in one of the white squares of the lino, then reared, two legs probing the light which fell through the window.

‘Indian white jacket,’ said Shaw.

‘I fucked up,’ said Valentine, his voice a rasp.

Shaw switched the torch back to his face. Valentine’s skin was white, bloodless. ‘Don’t move, George. Keep still.’ He examined Valentine’s neck — which seemed unblemished. But then he saw his hand, palm up, and within it the tell?tale double incision of the bite. Clear pustules were already erupting in a ring around the wound.

‘Spiders.’ He splayed a hand, indicating the size. ‘I jumped. Tripped, fell into the other one. More spiders.’ He closed his eyes and a thin line of saliva spilt from his mouth.

Shaw flicked his mobile open and stood. The retreating spider had switched direction and was now ambling back towards the door and the hatch by the kitchen. Shaw was on hold for the St James’s control room. Impatient, he counted out loud. ‘One, two, three, four…’

Then he stopped. He’d let his torchlight fall on the hatch: it was covered in spiders, sensing their food beyond the flimsy wood on the kitchen counter, a dozen, maybe twenty, and as the light fell on them they all moved at once, a single ripple of flexing legs.

‘Control room,’ said a familiar voice, but Shaw couldn’t speak.

Valentine’s pulse was a fading tattoo, so Shaw didn’t wait for the ambulance. He carried him, unconscious now, across the sports field, shocked by how light he was; just a sack of fragile bones. He used one of John Holt’s kitchen knives to open the wound, squeezing out as much of the clear poison as he could, then bandaging the hand with a tea towel. The ambulance finally appeared out of the teeming rain, and he carried him into the back. Valentine’s face was dotted with sweat so Shaw helped the paramedic get his raincoat off. Grasping the collar, he’d been oddly moved to glimpse a name tag inside: G. VALENTINE — like a child’s.

He’d left a PC guarding the pavilion, the doors locked, with orders to leave it that way until a unit arrived from Linton Zoo, near Cambridge.

John Holt was waiting in the squad car.

‘What’s happened?’ he said.

Shaw wasn’t in the mood to soften any of the blows. ‘He’s been bitten by one of your spiders. He may live,’ he said. ‘He may die.’

Holt buried his head in his hands. ‘Tell me,’ said Shaw. ‘Tell me quickly.’

‘They’re Indian white jackets — fifteen hundred pounds a time. It was Terry Brand’s last consignment. Izzy found the canisters floating down by the oyster beds that Monday

‘Save it,’ said Shaw, cutting him off.

He watched them drive Holt down towards the coast road, and he noticed the old man didn’t look back. One of the murder squad had brought Shaw’s Land Rover out to the scene and he unlocked it now, slid into the seat, turned on the heating and closed his eyes. From here he could see the sea in the light of dawn, brown, like over?brewed milky tea. It was a sepia world, sand brown and salt white.

He should get back to St James’s. He’d have to make a report to DCS Warren. He put both hands over his face and rubbed the skin. What would he feel if George Valentine died? That’s what Lena would want to know. At the moment he felt nothing. Shock? Maybe. Loss.

He had to get a grip. Duncan Sly would be ready for an interview soon at St James’s. They had the forensics, his blood?soaked clothes were damning enough without the evidence of Izzy Dereham and John Holt. It would be tough; but he couldn’t see how Sly could escape a murder charge. And yet…

He couldn’t forget that pathetic name tag on Valentine’s collar. It was as if the jerky handwritten capital letters were the only way the world could know who he was. He let that idea just float; an image swimming in and out of

He jerked back into the present, rubbing cold hands into his face, shivering. RFA. Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Not anyone’s initials at all. Why hadn’t that jarred at the time? He pressed knuckles into his eye sockets. Then the first thing he saw when he opened them was the picture Sasha Holt had given him, stuck to the passenger side of the dashboard: sycamore helicopters rising from a blazing fire. He touched it with a finger where the flames were red, and felt his blood surge, his heartbeat racing.

He heard an engine race and saw Tom Hadden’s 4x4 coming down the track from the cottage. Rainwater, coming down off the hill, had filled the ditches on either side. Plumes of water rose from the tyres as he rode through puddles. Shaw flashed his lights. The two stopped door?by?door and Shaw lowered the window.

Hadden did the same.

‘Jump in,’ said Shaw. ‘And bring your box of tricks.’ Hadden splashed his way round to the passenger side of the Land Rover. Inside, the door closed, the sound of the falling rain was deafening.

‘Any news on George?’ said Hadden.

‘He’s with the paramedics. There’s nothing I can do.’

‘OK,’ said Hadden, backing off, hearing the stress in Shaw’s voice.

He put the Land Rover into first and pressed on towards the cottages, negotiating the water?filled potholes and ruts until he could park beside the darkened house.

‘When I found Holt slumped at the wheel of the Corsa I loosened his collar,’ said Shaw, killing the engine. ‘There was a name tag on the jacket- at least that’s what I thought it was. RFA.’

‘Right. Royal Fleet Auxiliary,’ said Hadden. ‘Merchant Navy.’

‘Yeah. Except Holt was never in the Merchant Navy. It wasn’t his jacket — it was Duncan Sly’s. The blood?soaked material you found outside Sly’s boat was Holt’s jacket.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘They swapped at the scene. Holt had to stay around, get his car out on the coast road to box in Baker?Sibley’s Alfa, play his part. But Sly could get away from the scene. All he needed to do was walk to the far end of Siberia Belt and take in the AA no?entry sign. So they swapped jackets. It was Holt’s that was covered in blood. So he was at the scene after the fatal blow was struck — which means Izzy Dereham lied when she said she’d seen Ellis alive on Siberia Belt when they drove away from Gallow Marsh. I think she and Holt tried to frame Sly. They were family, and they were doing it for the kids. Sly was a loner. No family, no ties. Why not let him go down for it — especially as he’d planned the whole thing, recruited them, bribed them?’

‘It makes sense,’ said Hadden.

‘Why do we need time?’

‘Because it’s getting warmer,’ said Shaw. ‘And we still need to prove Holt was on the spot when Ellis died.’ He got out of the Land Rover and met Hadden in the headlights.

Hadden shook his head. ‘But I’ve told you — we didn’t find the boots.’

Shaw placed both hands on Hadden’s shoulders and smiled. ‘But I think I can find you the footprint we need.’

He looked up at the side of the house. The sycamore and the magnolia stood in the lee of the storm, both stunted now they’d been pruned, like scarecrow’s hands.

‘Your boys couldn’t find any footprints here because the ground’s frozen — has been since Monday night. But remember that on the Sunday Holt was here, pruning the sycamore, to make sure his little granddaughter didn’t have any more nightmares. Spring was in the air, it was mild and sunny.’

Shaw gave Hadden the surfer’s smile. Rain dripped off the end of Hadden’s nose.

‘If he’s our man, he pruned the tree wearing the boots he wore on Siberia Belt. And he did it before the frost bit. It doesn’t matter if he’s destroyed the boots, dumped them, whatever. Because we know what the print looks like.’

They both dropped to their haunches by the bole of the tree. Snow still lay on the ground, pockmarked with raindrops.

‘It’s under the snow,’ said Shaw. ‘Right here.’

‘What do we do?’ asked Shaw.

‘Try and keep the rain off while I apply some warm air — I use this to shift dust. But it’ll do.’ He played the dryer on the snow.

Shaw fetched a tarpaulin from the Land Rover and they hung it over the spot from the lower branches of the tree. Within minutes black, frost?shattered clods of earth had begun to poke through the white crust of the frozen ground.

‘There,’ said Shaw, pointing at two depressions beginning to emerge. ‘That’s where he set the ladder.’

Then a pair of footprints began to appear. Hadden used the fixative spray, securing the friable sandy soil in place as the ice melted. He prepared the dental stone to pour into the print and make a cast. The first footprint was useless — the boot had slid in the wet soil and smeared the pattern. But the second was stable, once sharp, but softening now the frost was melting. Until the last moment Shaw thought he was wrong. The heel was the last part of the print to be revealed: but finally the impossibly delicate bone?structure of the imprinted fern leaf emerged, as unique as a blood?soaked fingerprint.

‘There,’ said Shaw. ‘At last. The truth. Holt was there when Ellis died. And he’s told us nothing but lies ever since.’