Venn seemed to start at the sudden question. ‘Yes. Of course — terrible.’
‘We’re told that two black men attended her funeral. Do you know who they might have been?’
Venn shook his head. ‘Not by name, though I might be able to find out. There was a father and son, I know that much. The father worked for the corporation; at the bus depot, I think. They were with us a year — no more. After that I think they went to Peterborough. I’m sorry — the name really is gone. Shall I try to find it for you?’
‘Please,’ said Shaw. ‘It’s important. So you knew the Tildens well?’
Venn looked at his wristwatch. ‘A bit. Nora was an unhappy woman in many ways. I think the only joy in her life was experienced in this place. She didn’t really want to run the pub — any pub. But her father left it to her, so she didn’t have much choice. It was the family business, the family inheritance. Her father — Arthur Melville — made it pretty clear that’s what he expected of her. And there’d been a child at first, I think. Died in infancy. I seem to recall we always put her in our prayers …yes, a daughter. I always got the impression Nora spent the rest of her life grieving.’
Shaw checked his watch, frustrated by a sense that Venn was deliberately skirting direct answers to his questions.
‘But you’d have known Alby, when he came back from his travels?’
‘Yes. Some of his stuff used to clutter up the pub, I remember.’ Venn closed his eyes, as if trying to see into the past. ‘I recall a gong which stood in the billiard room. Vast thing. And some prints. And a gold Buddha he had up on a shelf — that always scandalized our church councillors. It’s still there.’
‘You used the pub?’ asked Valentine, surprised.
‘Yes. Still do. Two or three times a week for lunch. I was born here, Sergeant; went to the school. I see old friends. The Flask’s a special place, you see — it’s pretty much all that’s left of the community, except for our little church.’
He didn’t volunteer any more information, although Shaw felt certain he knew more than he’d said.
‘Thank you for your time, sir. Those names — the two black men who attended the Tilden funeral. We really do need to check them out. So, if you can …’
Venn looked at the coal scuttle he’d set at his feet. ‘I need to ring our archivist — she keeps the records. Every church member makes a tithe, so we should have something written down. Today, with luck?’
‘Please — soon as you can,’ said Shaw, turning towards the door. Under the twin portraits he stopped and turned. ‘Did Alby Tilden attend church?’
Venn laughed. ‘Er, no. Alby was one of those men who thinks that it doesn’t matter what they do, what rules they break, they should always be welcome in their own homes. I have no idea what he was like before he left …but we all knew the stories, the war hero. What’s that terrible euphemism: a man’s man?’ Venn looked up at the ceiling, the lightest of blues. ‘Some nights, if he’d had enough beer, he’d show you. Show anyone.’ He arched the brow over his good eye.
‘Show you what?’ prompted Valentine.
Venn glanced past them at the portrait of Equiano.
‘He had this tattoo, on his back, of a woman. A black woman. She was naked — a loose woman, I suppose. He could make her move with his muscles. Locals loved it. As party tricks went it was a winner every time. He’d do it in front of Nora …’ He shook his head, looking at the parquet floor. ‘I was there to witness this and I think it is one of the cruellest things I have ever seen. She was a hard woman, and she set her face against the world. But she didn’t deserve that. I thought it was …’ As he searched for the word he cradled his damaged arm. Then he looked with his good eye into Shaw’s. ‘Evil. Which is a rare thing, thanks be to God.’
9
The Flask stood on a slight rise by the river, a small clay cliff holding it clear of the tidal reach of the sea, four miles distant along the Cut. It was impossible to hide the building’s architectural heritage: the second floor jutting out above the first, the third above the second, the original beams exposed between the intricate brickwork. It stood at the end of Greenland Street, a stub of terraced houses petering out a hundred yards short of the river, leaving the pub to stand alone — the one property left behind when a line of slum tenements had been cleared. The demolition had left the Flask without vital support, hence the two steel buttresses which held up the end wall. Beyond the pub lay Flensing Meadow, and through the cemetery a riverside walk the council had cleared in the 1980s. Vandals had ripped up the wooden benches, and a plinth which told the story of Lynn’s whaling fleet was drenched in graffiti. Dog bins gave off a pungent scent, even in winter.
The pub sign hung from the first tier of the building and depicted a whaling ship. Over the beamed doorway a small plaque read ELIZABETH AND JOHN JOE MURRAY; LICENSED TO SELL BEERS, WINES AND SPIRITS.
In front of the door stood DC Fiona Campbell.
‘Sir — Tom wanted you to see something.’
Valentine put a hand on the pub door, pushing it open. ‘I’ll suss the place out.’
Shaw led Campbell round the building to a wooden deck which held six picnic tables, all dripping, snow melting from the slated tops. They stood looking out at the grey water. Just below them was an old stone wharf, a small clinker-built sailing boat moored by a frayed rope, the deck enclosed within a stretched tarpaulin. On the far side of the river they could hear the mechanical grinding of a conveyor belt in the cannery. Shaw thought about Freddie Fletcher’s ‘good British fare’ — local shellfish, cooked and canned. In midstream the trawler stood silently, while mist lingered on the water like steam drifting from a hot spa.
‘Fiona?’ He looked her in the eyes, which were brown and liquid and unflinching. Shaw had noticed that several people he knew well had developed a strategy when looking into his eyes. They focused only on the undamaged left, never the moon-like right. It gave him the impression she was looking over his shoulder.
Campbell flipped open her notebook to show Shaw a picture she’d drawn: a child’s image of a gibbet, a stickman hanging by the neck, but unfinished, with no legs and just one arm.
‘Tom found this drawing — well, one just like it — in the victim’s wallet. It’s my copy. The wallet had given it some protection from the water, but the paper’s virtually dust after the drying out. Tom could see some ink marks — used a box of tricks to get the image. There were other pieces of paper, all in a bundle, all the same size, but he couldn’t lift an image except for this one, which was halfway down. But there are ink traces on all the pages.’
Shaw tried to think straight, aware this might be important but irritated by the playfulness of the little drawing.
‘It’s from a game of hangman, isn’t it?’ asked Campbell.
‘It looks like it,’ said Shaw. He’d always found hangman macabre, a vicious echo of Victorian childhood, with its humourless grinning clowns and nightmare automata. ‘But it isn’t — is it? In the game you have to try to guess a word, and that’s usually spelt out on the same piece of paper. So it probably isn’t a game.’
Campbell looked at the sketch she’d drawn, baffled.
‘And our victim’s how old — twenty, twenty-five? A bit old for games, anyway.’
‘Keeping them in your wallet’s a bit weird, too,’ she said.
‘The paper?’
‘Tom says standard notebook — each sheet a torn-out page. The ink could have come from any high-street biro.’
Shaw looked up at the riverside facade of the pub. It hadn’t been a thought that had even crossed his mind, the idea that the pub had been home to children — first the infant Mary, then Lizzie. He’d always thought of pubs as being aggressively adult, having spent many hours in his childhood sitting outside them.
‘Circulate a copy of this to the team, Fiona. For now I can’t think of anything else we can do with it.’ He put a finger to his left temple. ‘Just keep it here.’