4

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

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

The storm itself passed in twenty minutes, rolling inland, buffeting winds at its leading edge, while in its wake the air was still, the last of the snow falling like poppies on Armistice Day, bled white.

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

Valentine popped another mint.

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

‘Right,’ said Valentine.

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

Boredom, bungalow and early retirement (enforced) had killed DCI Jack Shaw. Luckily, they killed him quickly. The early exit to Civvy Street had come care of his father’s last, notorious, case. Until then they’d been the force’s star team: DCI Jack Shaw and DI George Valentine. A pair of old‐ fashioned coppers in an old‐fashioned world. And so he knew what Valentine was thinking: that a decade ago they’d have wrapped this case up without all the mindless mechanics of police procedure, without a fancy degree in forensic art (whatever that was), or the check‐it, double‐check‐it philosophy.

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

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

Valentine produced a handkerchief and dabbed his streaming eyes.

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

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

And then, turning inland, he saw car lights – a line of vehicles backed up behind a pine tree which was in their path, its branches twisted and broken. Exhaust fumes hung in the airless night. That was the smell on the air, not an engine at sea. Shaw got the telescope out and held it to his good eye, focusing on the vehicle in pole position. A small pick‐up truck. The cab light was on, the windows flecked with snow, someone moving inside. He looked back along the line, each vehicle smoothed out by the gentle curves of snowdrifts.

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