She scratched some shorthand and readjusted the pink glasses, then dropped her notebook. ‘It’s John, isn’t it?’ she asked, when she’d retrieved it from the deck. ‘DI John Shaw.’
‘Peter,’ said Shaw. He thought this woman radiated a kind of perpetual low-level anxiety. ‘And we’re off the record, as I think your letter of invitation made clear.’ She nodded. ‘The information pack, which I’ll give you later, contains a statement from us — feel free to use that.’ He smiled, but she didn’t smile back because she’d got the point. All the quotes on the record would come from the chief constable. The last thing Shaw needed was to discover he’d stolen the boss’s limelight. Shaw’s time to take centre stage would only come if the inquiry turned into an expensive fiasco.
Osprey threaded its way through moored yachts. The boat had a canvas sun-cover but the sparkling seawater reflected light up, dappling the shadowy interior with light.
They’d been at sea for ten minutes and the quayside was almost out of sight, although they could still hear a one-armed bandit shuffling in the amusement arcade, the sound bouncing over the mirrored water of the long harbour. To the right the marshes stretched out of sight, deep channels of chocolate mud wandering through the reeds. To the left ran the sea wall, holidaymakers on the top walking out to the beach rather than taking a ride on the miniature railway which ran, unseen, on the far side. The smell of fish and chips lingered. But the air was cooler out here and the soundtrack was fluid — the screw turning, the water slapping the fibreglass hull and, just audible, the thud of waves falling on an unseen beach.
Shaw stood on one of the bench seats which circled the deck, his hand gripped to one of the poles which held up the awning. Valentine noted with irritation the DI’s stance: his weight down one leg, the shoulders relaxed, the face devoid of any trace of stress. It was one of the many facets of DI Peter Shaw that got under his skin — the effortless ability to be at ease.
‘Ladies, gentlemen,’ said Shaw, the voice lighter than you’d expect. ‘Thanks for coming. I have to remind you at this point that in accepting this invitation from the West Norfolk today your editors signed the embargo notice, so nothing can appear in print until after one a.m. Monday — and we take that to mean that nothing will appear until your Monday print editions. Websites can carry the same information, but only from one a.m. The information is being released only to print media — radio and TV will get the press release by email on the Monday morning at nine a.m.’
Shaw watched as the reporters exchanged smug looks of contentment. It was what they called in the trade a ‘beat’ — not quiet a scoop, because they were all being given the story, but they were going to be firmly one step ahead of TV and radio. He paused as the man from the Daily Mail rummaged in the cool box for a bottle. He had clearly decided, thought Shaw, this was a day off. He was in a pair of moleskin shorts with a shiny brass buckle, and a Polo shirt: baby blue, with a Lacoste brand label of the little crocodile. He’d once been able to fit into these clothes. Shaw guessed he was sixty, perhaps older. His skin was shiny, without surface tension. His name was Forbes — the first name Shaw had already forgotten.
‘So,’ continued Shaw, ‘just so that you can get your bearings. .’ He pointed back to Wells. ‘The town’s to the south of us; we’re just leaving the harbour, marshes to the east, reclaimed land behind the sea wall to the west. Over there — coming into view beyond the Lifeboat House — is the beach.’ They could see a line of beach huts in seaside colours, a wide expanse of sand, room enough for several thousand holidaymakers. Even now that they’d picked up the sea breeze, you could hear the sound of a summer beach: the whisper of a crowd punctuated with children screaming, a dog barking, the flutter of kites. On the steep sandbank beside the channel a cluster of seals basked in the sun, roped off from a small crowd of inquisitive holidaymakers by a flimsy fence of tape and sticks.
As Osprey slipped past the Lifeboat House Shaw trained his binoculars on the window in the mess room, on the second floor. Two figures in RNLI work overalls were at the glass, looking back at him. He waved once and both responded. Shaw had been on the lifeboat at Old Hunstanton, along the coast, for nearly ten years, having joined the RNLI while at university in Southampton. But he’d done shifts at Wells, which was one of the few full-time stations left on the coast, so he knew his way around. The doors of the main boathouse were open, revealing the blue and amber, sleek-hulled boat within.
‘And there,’ he said, raising his voice over the sudden cawing of seagulls, ‘is our destination,’ he added, pointing out to sea. The marshes turned inland here, to the east, to follow the coast. At the far point, about a mile off land, was a low island, crowned with dunes, marram grass and cowed pines. ‘East Hills,’ said Shaw. ‘That’s the scene of the crime — it’ll take us twenty minutes to get to the jetty. So do help yourself to a drink, and we’ve got some food too. .’ Shaw nodded to Valentine, who heaved a picnic basket up on to the engine cowling in the middle of the deck. The journalists descended like the gulls — all except Forbes, from the Daily Mail, who insinuated himself into a seat next to Valentine and tried to listen to his conversation with the man from the local paper.
Shaw studied the distant island. He had come here many times with his father as a child on the little ferry boat that ran out from the quay. Like most of the locals they’d avoided the trip in the high summer because the boat was crowded out with tourists and the ticket prices were steep. They’d gone at the weekend, spring and autumn. Despite the inconvenience — there was no drinking water, no shop, no nothing — it was one of the few places he’d ever seen his father relax. Even as a child he’d understood why, standing, holding his father’s hand, watching the ferry depart. Six hours before it came back. Six hours when the island was theirs. But even back then East Hills had a racy reputation — a kind of insular lover’s lane, with couples disappearing quickly off into the grassy dunes and pine trees as soon as the boat left. Shaw had stumbled on one pair, up in the pines, and the memory still brought the blood to his cheeks. He’d have been ten, maybe a year older, so the tangled naked limbs had made some kind of illicit, thrilling sense. But he didn’t know what to say — just a mumbled apology before running back to his parents. He’d sat, guiltily, feeling like a Peeping Tom who’d been caught out. He’d seen the couple, loose limbed, emerge from the dunes when the boat had come back, sounding a claxon as it bobbed off the floating landing stage, and they’d laughed at him — openly, and he’d felt that sickening adolescent certainty that he was never going to be admitted to the adult world.
But East Hills, like all his childhood haunts, looked smaller now. About six hundred yards long, a narrow ribbon of high dunes cut off from the coast by a deep channel and a persistent and lethal rip tide. Shaw noted the stone pines, the navigation buoy off the point, the pillbox: at an angle now, subsiding into the sand on the distant point. And the small wooden floating dock, beyond which the crowd on the beach was thickest.
He heard a question being asked and realized it was being asked of him. It was the man from The Daily Telegraph: a three-piece suit in a green country cloth. He’d be fifty-five, maybe sixty, radiating a kind, avuncular personality. But Shaw perceived something else beneath the unthreatening exterior. Accents quite that perfect were almost always manufactured. And when he’d got a hip flask out of his leather briefcase Shaw had seen a sheaf of cuttings on the West Norfolk force and its new chief constable, annotated in a neat, pencil, copperplate. So he’d done his homework.