He looked down at Voyce’s body. Shaw realized that in places he could see through the corpse to the roadway below.
‘He was tied in place?’ asked Valentine. He didn’t mean to whisper, but his throat had constricted because his body was thinking about being sick.
‘Well, that’s my guess. He was certainly tied …here.’ He placed a finger in a green forensic glove on the friction burn on the leg. ‘And it’s possible the other end of the rope was looped round the grating of the drain cover.’
‘Why?’ asked Shaw. ‘Why tie him down — then run him over? If you can tie him down you could hit him, put him out, then finish him off with the car.’
‘Punishment — like an execution?’ offered Hadden.
‘Or interrogation,’ said Shaw. ‘You tie him to the grate. Then ask your questions. Turn the car headlights on, then ask again. Then finish it.’
‘Either way it’s a cool bit of work,’ said Hadden, using the rope from the toolbox to test his theory. ‘Professional. A contract killing?’
Shaw shook his head. ‘No — that’s what he wants us to think,’ he said. He thought about Bobby Mosse’s calculated part-confession in the dunes the night before. He’d set the scene. Voyce was mixing company with the Tulleys, people who could do something like this. People who did it for a living.
‘This kind of impact would buckle the car bumper — do other damage?’ asked Shaw.
Hadden was nodding. ‘Maybe. Certainly there’d be blood, bone, tissue stuck to the vehicle.’
Shaw thought about Voyce’s car, burnt out, down the coast. They needed to double-check for structural damage. It was a hired car, they’d have a record of existing bumps and scrapes.
Then he thought about Bobby Mosse’s black BMW. A powerful machine, a lethal weapon. Even a glancing blow would have killed Voyce if he’d been tied to the drain cover. If Mosse had used the BMW he’d have cleaned the vehicle. But Shaw knew just how tenacious trace forensic evidence could be. He jogged to the Porsche and pulled a U-turn, then made a call on his mobile while he waited for Valentine to catch up. On the coast road they hit 90 mph, the marshes a blur on the offside, Jacky Lau’s Megane struggling to keep up, and out at sea, falling across the pin-sharp star fields, a meteor, as if the sky was falling in.
35
Ian Murray saw the same meteor fall. He was a hundred yards from the old coal barn, so he cut the engine and drifted, watching the night sky. It was like an omen, he thought. Here, inside the protective arc of the outer sand dunes, the sea was just choppy, slapping against the fibreglass hull of the Sandpiper. The boat had been another one of his ideas — in summer they’d hire one of the fishermen to take out guests from Morston House to see the birds on the marsh. You’d be surprised what you could charge, he’d told Bea. Thirty pounds a head; forty. A minute passed and more meteors fell, this time a dozen, like stardust thrown across the sky. The coal barn was a black silhouette against the churning water. A wavelet caught the Sandpiper side-on, the spray soaking Ian, so that he decided to fire the engine back into life.
John Joe Murray was waiting for him on the stone quay. He grabbed the line that his stepson threw. When he got ashore John Joe went to hug him but the young man looked away, letting the awkward moment pass. That should have been the first sign that something wasn’t right, but John Joe missed it; or rather he misinterpreted it, thinking it was just a fresh estrangement, another notch on the spectrum of distance as his stepson moved emotionally closer to the father he’d never known. It was a cruel moment, John Joe thought to himself, because in his life he’d done so much that was wrong, even shameful, but he’d never once tried to hurt Ian. He’d never aspired to being a good man, but in his stepson he’d invested all that was good in himself.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said. ‘I told Bea.’ He helped Ian haul out a fresh bag of provisions. ‘But thanks,’ he added.
They stood apart, listening to the waves thudding out on the sandbank at sea. The ghost of Pat Garrison seemed to stand between them.
‘I made tortilla, the way you like it,’ said Ian, handing him a parcel in silver paper. It had been their last holiday together, to Galicia, as a family. Ian, just sixteen, had collected recipes for the restaurant that was his dream. And that was the thing that John Joe was proud of still — the fact that he had dreams, as he’d had a dream, and he liked to think that was something he’d given Ian, not something that had come down to him through some arid string of DNA.
Ian lugged the provisions inside the stone barn, looking round the ground floor, clogged with flotsam and old nets.
‘Go up,’ said John Joe. ‘The tide comes in now — tonight, it’s a high tide, it’ll flood.’
Ian considered that, then climbed the stone steps. He took out more food, a flask, a loaf of fresh bread and a greaseproof-paper parcel. ‘Ham — Serrano,’ he said, setting it on a stone shelf. He gave a big ugly shiver. ‘Christ, it’s cold in here.’
John Joe was by the fire, working the logs, kindling the flames, and he wondered why Ian didn’t join him.
‘How’s your mum?’ he asked.
The flames flared, creating a sudden atmosphere of warmth, even if they could still see their breath.
‘She’s confused. She won’t talk — not to me, at least. Bea said not to tell her where you were. Mum thinks you’re pissed with us, over Pat. That we’ve written you out of our story.’
John Joe was pleased with that, because it took them where he wanted to go.
‘It’s best,’ he said. He rubbed his neck, massaging the tattoo of the green guitar.
‘Are you going to tell me?’ asked Ian. He still hung back from the fire, leaning easily against the rough stone wall, as if he didn’t want to be drawn in to that circle of light.
John Joe ignored the question. ‘And how’s Bea?’
‘She says the police came. But she didn’t tell them where you were. She says with the spring tides you can stay as long as you like. Even with the water out, you’re on an island.’
John Joe ran a hand back over the greying hair. ‘Someone wants to kill me,’ he said, and laughed as if he didn’t believe it either.
‘They killed Freddie Fletcher and Sam Venn. I’m next. I should have been there, with them, at our table at the Shipwrights’ Hall.’
Ian pushed himself away from the wall with his shoulders. There was something about the languid ease of the movement that John Joe didn’t miss, and for the first time he felt a wave of unease, a feeling that he was talking to a stranger.
‘Why?’ asked Ian, and there was a tone to the voice that turned it from a question into an accusation. ‘Why would someone want to kill the three of you? Police said it was food poisoning — some nutter up at the cannery. Who’d want to kill you?’
‘It’s not important now,’ said John Joe. ‘Staying alive’s important.’
‘They were scum — Fletcher and Venn,’ said Ian, and in the gloomy light John Joe saw a flash of Ian’s white teeth as his upper lip curled back. ‘Mum always said that. She said her flesh used to crawl when they came through the door. Sam, self-righteous Sam. Mum said he was just like Grandma: afraid that people would know that he didn’t feel anything inside. And Fletcher — do you know what I felt like when Freddie Fletcher used to look at me?’
‘How should I know?’ asked John Joe, reflecting the angry timbre of his stepson’s voice.