Brindle shifted in his seat again, and Shaw noticed the blood had drained from his face.
But Fletcher couldn’t stop himself now. ‘I got six hundred votes last time, less than fifty the time before that. The BNP got thirteen per cent of the vote in one ward. Twice what the Greens got. It’s coming, Inspector. Doesn’t matter what the party’s called. It’s the message that counts. It’s a message that’s getting through.’
Shaw didn’t respond, but stood, studying a notice-board crowded with posters, business cards, a few snapshots of what looked like BNP outings: one on the beach at Hunstanton by the funfair, everyone pale white, trying to get a tan.
‘How about a ticket for the annual Christmas fund-raiser, Inspector?’ Fletcher waggled a bunch of multicoloured raffle tickets. ‘Nice bit of grub at the Shipwrights’ Hall. I’ve taken a whole table on behalf of the Flask — shows we support our local community.’
He came round the desk and tapped a finger on a printed menu he’d pinned to the wall. ‘Good British fare,’ said Fletcher. ‘Better than that, even …’ He stabbed a finger on the starter. ‘Local fare.’
Shaw let his eye run down the menu — each item accompanied by a brief account of its sourcing.
Norfolk Turkey
Supplied by C. J. Tilte amp; Sons of West Norfolk
‘Food this community has been catching and eating for centuries. None of your foreign muck,’ added Fletcher, standing at his shoulder, as Shaw noted the starter.
Olde Lynn Fish Soup
Supplied by Fisher Fleet Shellfish, and the
Clockcase Cannery, West Lynn
Shaw thought about the turkey they’d had last year — Jamaican-style jerk turkey, marinated in scallion and garlic.
‘I’ll stick to Christmas dinner with the family,’ he said. ‘One’s enough for me.’ He was astonished to see that of all the things he’d said to Fletcher, this was the one that made him break eye contact.
‘We’ll need to take a statement, Mr Fletcher,’ he added, avoiding a handshake. ‘You’ll be here later?’
Fletcher spread his hands as if he never left the room. ‘If not, there’s always a note on the door.’
They left him and clattered down the bare wooden steps into the steamy fug of the cafe. Brindle collected three greasy bags from the counter, their contents now cool and congealing. Shaw thanked Brindle and walked up the street, opting to take the long way round to the cemetery gates where he had left the Porsche. It was a bit early to be assessing suspects, he thought, but there was every reason to keep a close eye on Freddie Fletcher. But despite the fact the man had had opportunity, and his own twisted motive, he felt there was something profoundly ineffectual about Fletcher, something fundamentally weak. He couldn’t imagine him delivering that fatal blow — although, he reminded himself, buttoning up his coat against the chill wind, it had been from behind.
8
The church stood on the corner of Whitefriars Street and Tope Street — a simple chapel of stark geometical lines with long narrow windows in green glass. On the brickwork was a sign — a silver fish, two sinuous lines, crossing once to leave an open tail, just like the brooch on Nora Tilden’s shroud but this one set above the door on which was a wooden panel, painted green, carrying the name.
THE FREE CHURCH OF CHRIST THE FISHERMAN
Shaw stopped, checked his tide watch and the mobile. He still had time before they were due to interview Nora Tilden’s daughter Lizzie at the Flask. He was haunted by an image of the graveside on that day in 1982 when the family would have come together: the small crowd of local mourners and the two black faces amongst them, members — according to Freddie Fletcher — of ‘the Free’.
Had one of them come to regret the decision to show respect, to claim a rightful place in that community? Times had changed in Lynn, the appearance of the east European migrant workers shifting popular prejudice away from the few black families in the town. But back then they would have been marked men: outsiders in a seafaring community renowned for its insularity. He wondered what Nora Tilden had felt about those black faces; she was a member of the ‘Elect’, in a church once dedicated to the emancipation of slaves.
But she also had a husband who’d left her to travel the world, finding comfort in the whorehouses of North Africa.
He heard footsteps and a figure walked out of the mist, as narrow as one of the chapel windows, the head held forward like a vulture’s. Valentine was wrapped in his raincoat, holding the lapels at his throat, a cigarette lit. Shaw noted he’d picked up a new charity sticker: BARNARDO’S, an orange sticky disc stuck over his heart.
‘Pub’s not open,’ he said.
‘George,’ said Shaw, nodding at the chapel. ‘Nora’s church. Some of them turned up at the graveside that day — and two of them were black.’ Low in the sky to the south the sun found a thin patch of mist and appeared as a disc, so that the two lines of the silver fish caught the light, like knives.
Valentine nodded, thinking of the wispy grey hair on Nora Tilden’s skull.
Shaw filled him in on the rest of his interview with Freddie Fletcher.
‘Suspect, then?’ asked Valentine.
‘Get Paul to organize a statement,’ said Shaw, avoiding a direct answer, surveying the chapel’s facade.
‘He’s not just a racist, is he?’ said Valentine. ‘He knows the grave’s open. And he knows whose job it is to fill it in. That’s opportunity, that is.’
‘I know,’ said Shaw, pushing open the door so that they could step into the porch, lined with bibles stacked on shelves. He thought that despite his apparently casual indifference Valentine had a rare gift for seeing the bigger picture, for rising above the detail. He was right in one key respect. In this crime, opportunity was everything. The killer had to have known that the grave was still open.
Shaw picked up one of the bibles, seeing the words without seeing the meaning. They’d been read, all of them, almost to destruction. Several had lost their spines while others were spilling pages that had come free. He thought of the hands that had held them over the years, either open to read or closed and pressed to the chest in prayer. The thought made him feel like a visitor in a foreign land.
A further door led into the chapel itself. It was a simple room with whitewashed walls. Shaw was immediately aware that, once inside, it seemed to be both lighter and colder than outside. He thought he could smell the sea in here, too, and the illusion suggested the walls might be made of salt. In the silence the air rang, and held within it the sound of the sea, as if they were in a giant shell.
They walked down the aisle, some of the wooden parquet blocks in the floor rattling under their feet.
‘Christ, it’s cold in here,’ said Valentine, rolling his shoulders. ‘What are they? Methodists? A sect?’ The last time Valentine had been in a church had been for his wife’s funeral at All Saints. It was whitewashed too, he recalled, and perhaps that was common in seagoing communities. The memory made him feel the guilt of the survivor.
Shaw turned to look back at a modest set of organ pipes set over the door by which they’d entered. ‘Music, at least,’ he said. ‘Rest of it’s a bit joyless.’
Set on either side of the pipes were two portraits in plain gold frames. To the right a man in a severe white wig, the face pinched, the cheeks slightly flushed. It was one of those rare images — Shaw guessed from the late eighteenth century — which actually looked like a human being, even if it was not a particularly attractive human being. The other portrait was of a black man: Caribbean black, with a fine red silk scarf at his throat. Shaw guessed he’d be in his twenties, perhaps thirty, the strong white teeth still intact, the skin tension taut, the eyes searching and intelligent. He couldn’t fail to see again the skull they’d found on Nora Tilden’s coffin. It too had once been clothed in a face like this.