Shaw stamped his foot lightly, marking the spot. ‘I wondered — we wondered — why you’d killed Jimmy Voyce like that,’ he said. Valentine coughed, taken aback by Shaw’s sudden hostile change of tack. ‘Tying him down first. There was something, wasn’t there, that he wouldn’t tell you.’
Mosse’s shoulders slumped, as if in disappointment. His hands were in his pockets and he dug them deeper. ‘This is going to be a waste of time,’ he said to himself, but loud enough for them to hear.
Valentine spat on the ice.
‘You can see through his body — right to the ground underneath,’ said Shaw. ‘The impact nearly cut him in two. I think you wanted information. Because you were being blackmailed, had been blackmailed, subtly, but persistently. And you wanted to be sure it would end when Voyce died. What kind of information was it?’
Mosse looked at his wristwatch and a cufflink caught the light.
‘I think it’s the same information that Alex Cosyns had,’ said Shaw. ‘And I think it all goes back to Chris Robins. Something they knew, or something they had; something you were prepared to pay to keep secret. Did they ever tell you what it was — or was it enough to know it was there? That it was sufficient to put you behind bars for the murder of Jonathan Tessier.’
Mosse let a smile form on the otherwise immobile face.
‘Of course,’ he said, running a hand back through the barbered hair. ‘That’s what this is about. Your father.’ He looked around. ‘This was where his career came to an end, wasn’t it? Right here. Where he found that glove.’
Valentine was motionless. It was an illusion, Shaw knew, but it seemed as though the cigarette smoke had solidified around him.
‘I think Alex Cosyns milked you for years,’ said Shaw. ‘Low key, nothing in your face. But then he upped the pressure, didn’t he? Because Chris Robins got some cash too — although he never got to spend it. And that’s why Alex Cosyns died, too — because it was all getting too expensive, and we were getting closer to the truth. You thought it was over then, with Cosyns and Robins dead — although it didn’t stop you getting someone to ransack Robins’s stuff during his funeral, just in case whatever they had was there. Which implies, doesn’t it, that there was something. A confession? Maybe. Or something more tangible?’
Mosse tapped the toe of his shoe on the solid ice of the puddle.
‘So you must have been pretty upset when you heard Jimmy Voyce on the line — and not long distance, either, but right here in Lynn. What did you give him — a few minutes in the pub, just to make sure he was on the same game as the rest? After your money. But the key question, the one you took him down to the woods to pose, was did he have the information. Get an answer?’
Mosse turned to Valentine. ‘This is delusional, Sergeant. You really should step in, you know. This is going to look so bad in retrospect. When my complaint goes in to the chief constable’s office. You’ll both be finished then.’ And that’s when his neck muscles jerked, just a fleeting spasm, but it made his head lower an inch, like a boxer ducking an imaginary blow. It was the first time the facade had cracked, the stress of the moment short-circuiting his nervous system.
Valentine was watching his face and he saw that Mosse’s skin colour was changing, very gradually, the blood draining away so that the tan looked artificial. It was like watching a lizard in the sun.
‘But it doesn’t have to be the same for you,’ said Mosse, licking dry lips, looking at Valentine’s tightly knotted tie. ‘Know what I think? I think you were loyal. Stood by Jack Shaw. It wasn’t your idea to contaminate the glove, was it? But you paid the price.’ He smiled. ‘And now you’re here. Being loyal again. Same mistake. It’s a family thing. They’re going to take you down with them. Then he’ll walk away from the wreckage. There’s that nice little business the wife runs down on the beach. What have you got to walk away to?’
Mosse affected a shiver, produced a pair of gloves, fur-lined, and slipped them on.
‘Now, I think you wanted me to ID Jimmy Voyce’s body?’
‘This time next week I’ll know what they knew,’ said Shaw. He judged the tone perfectly — there was no doubt he was speaking the truth. ‘There’s been an invitation. A family affair. Last will and testament of Chris Robins. I’ll know everything — as I said, by this time next week. So, if you were planning on leaving town at all, I’d appreciate notice. Because we’ll need to talk again.’
He’d thought about the words to use. He could have told him the stark truth, but Mosse would have seen what a weak threat that was, just as they had. This way Mosse had seven days to imagine the worst.
Mosse’s eyes flitted between them. He said he was going, but he didn’t move. The uniformed PC stood out of earshot, but they could hear him stamping his boots in the cold. Somewhere, out on the Westmead, a car alarm began to blare.
‘You all done?’ asked Mosse.
‘Not quite,’ said Shaw.
‘Really?’ asked Mosse. ‘I think you’re all done, because we wouldn’t be standing in an underground car park if you could prove any of this, Inspector. We’d be down at St James’s. And if this mysterious invitation was so persuasive I think you’d have waited until after the reading. Then we could have talked.’
He ruffled his hair and Shaw thought he caught the scent of it — apple again, or something citrus.
‘And, if you don’t mind a bit of free legal advice, I’d think twice about a next time. Jack Shaw made a big mistake that night. I don’t mean not bagging the glove, or bringing it to the flat — although, frankly, they were disastrous mistakes. No — the big mistake was that he thought I’d killed that child. I didn’t. And I find it unforgivable to be accused of that crime — again.’
His voice was angry, but Shaw could tell this was play-acting. He wasn’t offended at all, he was playing for time, hoping Shaw would tell him more.
‘I’m sure your father paid for his mistake. I don’t know how, and I don’t want to know. But if you make the same mistake, you will pay too.’
‘This time next week,’ said Shaw.
A Vauxhall Corsa came down the ramp, parked fifty feet away, and a teenager in a baseball cap walked away from it towards the exit.
Shaw could see that Mosse had not only made mistakes in this interview, but that he knew he had. He was re-calculating, like a dashboard GPS, but he couldn’t do it fast enough.
‘And Voyce’s car — that’s another mistake. Only partly burnt out. You drove it, didn’t you? Not a mark on the BMW. So you used his car. There’ll be forensics, there are always forensics,’ said Shaw.
‘That’s it,’ said Mosse. He turned to Valentine. ‘Unless you have any rational questions, Inspector?’ He did a little am-dram double-take. ‘Sorry — Sergeant.’
It was — in retrospect, Shaw thought — his biggest error. He couldn’t walk away without that one taunt. It was retaliation, which meant he’d been hurt.
‘I’ll save my questions,’ said Valentine. ‘For next time.’
37
Saturday, 18 December
Shaw and Valentine stood on the corner of Explorer Street, the snow falling so thickly that the two lines of terraced houses faded away into a white gloom, as dense as a sauna but so cold that Shaw could feel his skin freezing. A week before Christmas. From almost every window fairy lights shone, and above one door in the mid-distance a single reindeer pranced, flickering tirelessly from front hooves to back. It was just before nine o’clock in the morning and a silhouette trudged past them, a street cleaner in a reflective council jacket on his way to work. Shaw checked his watch, while Valentine listened for the clock to chime at All Saints.