‘There,’ said Valentine. A squad car was just visible in the grey mist, no light flashing. Shaw let the Porsche park itself, rolling to a halt, then dropped the window as the sturdy front-row-forward silhouette of DC Mark Birley appeared out of the fret. Birley was three years out of uniform, one of Shaw’s team, still a fish out of water in the world of CID.
‘Sir. It’s Roundhay, Sir. He’s about fifty yards up the slope — near the top hedge. He’s at the wheel of the car — a four-by-four. We had him under surveillance pending the DNA tests on Grieve’s bones. Early shift yesterday saw him leaving for work in the family car and followed him in. Late shift took over at two. He got a cab home after a few drinks in town. Must have slipped out overnight on foot over the back fence. The wife called St James’ at nine this morning and said he’d left a suicide note and that the car was missing.’ Birley pointed a once broken finger into the mist: ‘Just there — you can see the headlights.’
Shaw and Valentine peered into the gloom. You could see the lights, but the beam was feint, shifting, as a light breeze tumbled the skeins of mist.
Birley passed Shaw a mobile phone. ‘He left this for you, sir, with the note. Specifically. He said he’d ring you on it at 1.35 a.m. this afternoon, on the dot. You have one chance to answer.’
‘What did the note say?’ asked Shaw.
‘Wife’s with victim support — she’s pretty much in pieces. She destroyed it. Fiona’s with her, but all she’ll say is it was private.’
They could hear it now, the low rumble of the 4x4’s engine.
Valentine leant over so he could see Birley’s face. ‘And we’re sure he’s not run the exhaust in? We’re not sitting here while he fucking does it, are we?’
‘Foot patrol said there was no sign of a pipe, tube, nothing. And the wife was sure he’d keep the promise — he’d call at one thirty-five p.m.’
Shaw checked his watch. 1.32 p.m. and pretty much, according to his watch, bang on high tide for Hunstanton. The mist seemed to swaddle all noise. There was a thin swish-swish from the coast road, and shreds of a metallic tune from the fun fair.
‘Plan?’ asked Shaw.
Birley nodded like he’d expected to be in charge. Valentine had noted this aspect of Shaw’s command: that at any moment he could offer control to a subordinate. It worked well because everyone had to keep on their toes, be prepared to take responsibility. ‘You take the call,’ said Birley. ‘Let him say what he wants to say. Then we rush him — I’ve got two squad cars here, other side of the hedge, half a dozen on foot up by the ticket machines. We’ve no idea what he’s got in there but the favourite has to be pills.’
Pills. Shaw thought that if Roundhay was their killer after all then he might have a cyanide pill, in which case rushing the car was useless. But if they tried to get to him before the call he could crush a pill in a second. They didn’t have a choice. He’d take the call. ‘OK. Sounds good. We’ll get a bit closer,’ said Shaw, lowering the window, igniting the engine then inching uphill, trying to keep the dim headlights in view. They got within thirty yards. They could see the outline of the four-by-four’s windscreen, lit by the vanity light within. Roundhay, his head back on the rest, both hands on the steering wheel.
‘Well?’ asked Valentine. ‘What’s this about?’
Shaw shrugged. ‘One minute we’ll know. Maybe it’s confession time. Maybe he knows we’ll get a match off his mates’ bones. Maybe we’re wrong about Coyle — what if he’s done a runner for some reason we don’t know, like debt? He’s clearly short of a few bob. Who knows?’
Shaw peered through the fog. ‘I don’t like this, George. Not a bit.’
The phone rang and Shaw almost dropped it, catching it at the second attempt.
‘Chris,’ he said, trying to keep his voice level. ‘Chris Roundhay?’
‘You out there?’ said Roundhay. Shaw thought the voice was a bad sign: cool, level and in control. He’d planned this, or something like it, and so far Shaw suspected everything had happened in the right order, at the right time.
‘Here,’ said Shaw, flashing the headlights.
‘I’m impressed. I didn’t think you’d find me in this fog. Don’t get any closer.’
‘OK. No problem. Whatever you want.’
‘I needed you to know — for someone to know.’ Shaw could see Roundhay’s head working from side to side, as if trying to relieve stress in his neck. ‘The week Marc died in the car, I saw him. He called, said he wanted to see me, so we met down at Wells on the long beach, on one of the dunes. His marriage hadn’t worked out; he thought he’d made a mistake, denying things to himself, to me. We could meet, maybe. A day, a night, once a month — less if I wanted.’
Silence, but looking ahead into the mist they saw a slight movement and then the sound of the Nissan’s engine died. ‘I said I didn’t want that. That I wouldn’t see him again. That I had another life. He said he’d kill himself because he had nothing else to live for. I didn’t believe him.’ An edge of emotion at last, thought Shaw, Roundhay’s voice catching on the last word.
‘So he did. I’m sure of that. I don’t think he planned it, but I can imagine his mind working like that. Just driving along and then the hopelessness of it taking him over, and then he’d just spin the driving wheel and know it was over. I wanted you to know. .’
Shaw looked at his watch, part of his mind worrying away at the coincidence: that Roundhay wanted to talk at 1.35 p.m., exactly at high tide.
‘As soon as I knew that he was dead I knew I’d made the wrong decision. That my life was hopeless too. But I buried that idea, like I’ve buried everything else. I carried on with my life. Now I can’t. You’ll know soon enough but it isn’t his DNA on that towel. Or mine. I told you the truth about that. . So it’s over now.’
Shaw covered the phone. ‘Tell ’em in the squad car, George. I hit the horn, they rush him.’
Valentine cracked open the door, slipped out, letting it just hang open. Shaw heard his slip-ons squeak as he walked away into the mist.
Shaw swished the droplets of fog off the windscreen. Peering into the mist he thought he could see Roundhay winding down his window then leaning over to do the same on the passenger side. Through the half-open door Shaw felt what Roundhay, perhaps, had felt too — a light breeze, promising a return of the sun. ‘Chris?’
‘The truth — finally,’ said Roundhay. ‘I saw that woman — Osbourne — walking along the beach. And White followed her. But that was it. We made up, Marc and I — lay in the sun.’ A two-second pause. ‘We were happy, and that’s the truth.’
The line went dead. Shaw’s hand was poised over the horn, then he recognized a sound, a handbrake being released. He was out of the Porsche before the Nissan began to move. It inched forward at first, the headlamps appearing to widen like the eyes of a frightened cat. Roundhay let the car freefall, accelerating with the slope, quickly picking up speed, so that when Shaw got level the car had hit thirty-five mph, maybe forty mph.
Shaw ran, stumbling over the rutted field, trying to keep the rear lights of the Nissan in sight. He knew now why Roundhay had chosen high tide. The sea came up to the cliffs at high water, so there’d be nobody on the beach, or the rocks: no one below.
When the Nissan reached the edge the brake lights didn’t show and he’d hit fifty mph. There was a thud as the cliff edge caught the underside of the car, the front wheels dipping, so that the back flipped up in the air. Then three seconds of silence — stretched out, in which Shaw imagined the car turning in the grey misty air. There was no crash, just the thud of the roof hitting the water, a boom. When Shaw got to the edge it was still afloat, the tyres still turning, upside down, the water flooding in through the open windows. Then it sank, the lights still shinning for a moment in the green dark water, before shorting out.