Shaw looked around the room. In the centre was an oak desk. One wall was dominated by a map of Lynn, the various council wards marked out. He knew that in the last district elections the BNP had done well in Gaywood, one of the wards on the outskirts of town. The town was on the edge of the new BNP heartland — rural East Anglia — where the party could tap into anxieties about migrant farm workers. And there had been a charm offensive, too; an attempt to play down the party’s violent and racist past — lots of community work, helping the elderly, fundraising for the local working-men’s club. Not a word about repatriation for blacks and Asians — but then in Lynn, as in much of the surrounding area, that wasn’t an issue. But he’d never heard of the PEN. A splinter group, perhaps.
‘Give me a sec,’ said Fletcher, walking away to the window with a mobile to his ear. Shaw judged his height at five-eight, five-ten at most.
On the desk was a pile of leaflets, fliers for a forthcoming concert:
THE OLD SONGS ARE THE BEST
Hear some of Lynn’s famous sea shanties
performed by the Whitefriars Choir
Nar Bank Social Club
Monday, 3 January 2011
All proceeds to local charities
The PEN motif was in the bottom right-hand corner, the size of a thumbprint.
Fletcher killed his call and took the captain’s chair behind the desk. Shaw and Brindle sat on a short bench against one wall.
‘Can I help?’ He picked up a pen and leant back, like a bank manager considering a loan. But his fingers were a working-man’s fingers — fat and inflexible. On the desk was a framed picture, turned to face visitors, showing Fletcher at a back-garden barbecue, his arms round two children.
‘Maybe,’ said Shaw. ‘It’s about a burial on Flensing Meadow — 1982. The graves are being exhumed because of the flooding, and something has been found — something that shouldn’t have been there. A body.’
‘It’s a graveyard — what did you expect to find?’
‘An unidentified body,’ Shaw continued, ‘on top of the coffin in one of the graves.’
Fletcher’s fleshy eyelids slid down, fluttered, as if he’d been asked a tricky maths question. ‘Oh, right. Where, exactly?’
‘Down towards the riverbank, a few feet from a big Victorian stone tomb.’
‘Yeah, I know where you mean. Well, in that case there’s a good chance it’s one of mine.’
Brindle shifted on the pew. ‘It’s Nora Tilden’s — Lizzie’s mum.’
Fletcher’s eyes widened. ‘Christ. Of course — yeah. I was on that.’ He laughed, bringing both hands together to cover his mouth. ‘The husband killed her, you know that. Alby, they called him. Scum. Nobody ever understood why she took him back. He’d been off on the ships, sleeping with blacks. Came back with what he deserved as well — riddled with it. Christ! And she took him back into her bed.’
He leant forward, as if to share a secret. ‘He even had a picture of one of the women — a tattoo, on his back. A black.’
Fletcher tried a smile of incredulity on Shaw, a glint of gold dental work catching the light.
Shaw tried hard to make sure Fletcher didn’t see him swallow, his mouth dry with anger. ‘So you went back for a drink that day — to the wake at the pub? The grave would have been left open?’
Fletcher worked his palm over the black stubble on his face.
‘Yeah. Course. We all knew Nora. And he’d been banged up for it — so that was a celebration. We’d have covered the grave — but if you’re asking if someone could have chucked a body in and we’d miss it, then I guess the answer to that is yes, it’s possible.’
Brindle shifted in his seat.
‘So you would have filled it in by nightfall? It was November — so before five?’
‘Problem was,’ said Fletcher, ‘it wasn’t really a wake — like I said, more of a party. Nora ran a strict house, Inspector. No swearing, no dancing, no singing. If she caught you enjoying yourself, you were barred for life.’ The glint of dental work again. ‘Fact is, while she was a pillar of the community, the pub was like a morgue — had been since the war. Alby used to drink down the Albatross on his night off, that’s how bad it was. So when she died the great and good turned out, but they fucked off as soon as the cucumber sandwiches were gone. Then the party kicked off. Lizzie’s not her mother’s daughter …Lizzie likes a party. Still does. So we had one. A corker.’
Shaw had decent radar when it came to listening to a witness. So far he felt Fletcher had worked with the truth. But he sensed something else, a guardedness.
‘None of which answers my question, Mr Fletcher. The time that you filled in the grave.’
‘We didn’t. At least, not that night. I went back up next morning — me and the hangover. Filled it in by spade with Will Stokes.’ He held up a hand. ‘He’s dead — has been for years, so he’s not getting any better. You’ll have to take my word for it. That would have been ten, maybe half ten, the morning after.’
Shaw looked at a poster over Fletcher’s shoulder; it was of Fletcher’s face, jaw set, a Churchillian squint. ‘The corpse that we found — there’s every chance the man in question was black. That would have been rare then, in Lynn?’ asked Shaw.
Fletcher leant back, hands behind his head, revealing grey patches of sweat at his armpits.
‘You’d be surprised. We had ’em all right. Still do. The bus company took on some from Peterborough, the Queen Vic’s got ’em on the nursing staff — few of the doctors. But not many — you’re right. Spot on a domino.’ Cruelly, Shaw wished Valentine had been there to hear that coming from Fletcher’s mouth. ‘But there’s a touch of the tarbrush in a few of the schools — even round ’ere.’
Fletcher placed his hands flat on the desk, a visible effort to maintain his self-control. ‘But they’re not a concern to us.’ Fletcher’s tone of voice had lightened, and Shaw sensed he’d slipped into a stock stump speech. ‘It’s the Poles, the Portuguese, the Serbs — all kinds of Eastern rubbish. And we sympathize with you, Inspector. All the policemen who have to deal with ’em — ’cos your hands are tied, right? The law — that’s one of the things we need to change. ’Cos you have to admit — ’
‘Actually, I don’t,’ said Shaw. It was one of the many things he found distasteful about people like Freddie Fletcher, the need to find converts. ‘I’ve never heard of the PEN,’ he added.
‘You will. BNP’s gone soft round ’ere. Someone needed to keep the flame alive. So I left — set up in South Lynn. They’ll want me back one day.’
Shaw wondered if Fletcher had been booted out. That was a grubby badge of honour. ‘And for future reference, Mr Fletcher, Portugal is in western Europe. So that would make them Western rubbish, if any kind. But for the record — that night at the Flask, or at the funeral, were there any black faces?’
Fletcher pinched his fat chin. ‘Yeah — two of them, from the Free.’
Shaw could see that his witness had become hostile.
‘Which is?’ asked Shaw, standing, going over behind Fletcher to look out of the window. In the street a council Scarab was parked in the gutter. And behind Fletcher’s desk he noted a box in the corner, cardboard, full of second-hand toddlers’ toys.
‘Church,’ he said, throwing a thumb over his right shoulder. ‘The Free Church, on Tope Street. Nonconformists. Reformed Baptists. Nora was one of ’em …one of the Elect.’ He lingered on the word, as if it was of value in itself. ‘That’s what they call ’em — “the Elect”. Anyway, blacks go — always have done. They were against slavery, see? So they had to let ’em in when they were free. Bit fucked-up like that.’ He faked a belly laugh.
‘Could you give me some names?’ said Shaw.
Fletcher swung round in the seat, looking at Shaw, the hint of a smile in the eyes. ‘Didn’t know they had names. What next, eh?’