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39

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

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

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

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

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

Shaw walked to the wooden dock’s edge and looked down into the water. The clarity was heart‐stopping. He could see the black mud beneath, an eel sliding sideways raising a small whirlpool of silt, a rotting ship’s timber arcing out of the river bed like a whalebone.

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

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

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

Valentine nodded.

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

‘He’s in the bag,’ said Valentine.

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

Shaw raised a hand, pointing to a spot about ﬁfty yards offshore, in the middle of the ﬂooded creek. A single ﬂat stone had broken the surface. ‘Causeway,’ said Shaw. ‘Twenty minutes, we can walk across.’

Over the water they heard a sound from the house.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

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

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

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

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

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

When the Tessier case was thrown out of court they’d moved swiftly to make sure it was soon forgotten. Jack Shaw had been eased into early retirement, while George Valentine had been quietly docked a rank and sent to the backwaters of north Norfolk. The case had been allowed to disappear under dust, despite the fact that Tessier’s killer was still at large. Nobody at St James’s, least of all DCI Warren, would want to know the truth if it meant reliving the past.

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

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

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

‘We?’

‘DS Valentine and –’

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

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

‘I’m making a formal request, sir,’ said Shaw, unable to resist the tactic of lowering his voice so that Warren had to strain to hear him. ‘On the grounds of a reexamination of the forensic evidence – I’ve included a summary in the letter. I can put that before you, or go directly to the chief constable’s office. I believe this new information warrants a fresh inquiry. It at least warrants a review. That’s my recommendation.’

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

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

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

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

Shaw’s mobile throbbed again. A picture from Lena. The sudden image made Shaw’s hair stand on end. A pencil drawing of a face, the heavy lower lip and the high forehead marking it out as his wife. But the artwork was his daughter’s – he recognized the way she always tried to draw each and every eyelash. She was her mother’s daughter in so many ways except, perhaps, in this fascination with faces. She’d watched him drawing at home, his party trick, catching the likeness of friends, relatives, the odd customer in the café. But she had her own talent for it too. He couldn’t work out why he found it unsettling. Perhaps it marked a coming of age, a signal that one day she might live in the same world that he did.

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

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

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

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

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

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

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

‘Jillie?’ he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Mr Narr?’ asked Shaw.

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

‘He’s home.’

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

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

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

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

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

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

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

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

Colin Narr lay in the bath, his limbs contorted into an agonizing semaphore. In the water lay a toaster: silver, with a marine blue side decorated with a silver anchor. His ﬂesh was black at the extremities of his limbs, a bluish‐purple on the torso, his face a ripe peach, the lips a startling blue. The ﬂesh, cooked, swelled at the joints. Shaw forced himself to look a second time, to check the ears, the shrunken lobes.

The only sound was the swing in the garden.

Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

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39

Death Wore White