‘Sir.’ He stifled a yawn.
He took them down Explorer Street to an alleyway, then cut north and out into the hidden churchyard of All Saints. Here the snow made a blanket for the dead. On one fine civic monument to a long-dead mayor someone had arranged ten cans of Special Brew in bowling-pin formation. The snowfall was so gentle the cans still stood, upright and untouched.
Bright led the way to the church porch. Around them, encircling the churchyard, was a 1960s low-rise block of former council flats.
‘That one there, sir — second floor, with the window open in the bathroom? That’s the mother of the pusher we arrested outside the school, after your tip-off. The woman who said she saw the light in the cemetery is her next-door neighbour. On the other side the flat has a balcony looking down into Explorer Street. I’d read the witness summaries for your case on the murder incident room website, so when I called round to take her down to St James’s to bail her son I took a look. Now, the neighbour said she saw the light in the graveyard over the rooftops. But she couldn’t have, sir — the terraced houses are too high. Third floor — maybe. Second floor — never.’
‘Name?’ Shaw asked.
Valentine beat Bright to it. ‘Jade Moore.’ The DS looked at his shoes, knowing that was a stupid thing to say, because if he knew the name then he’d read the statement, and he’d lived here, in this neighbourhood, all his life, so he should have known that she couldn’t have seen what she said she’d seen.
They let Bright lead the way, into a stairwell then up to the landing.
Jade Moore was in her mid-forties and applying make-up to try to look half that age. She had a job to go to, she was late, she couldn’t spend all day talking to them.
Shaw explained why they were there and asked her to open the metal-framed door to the balcony.
‘It’s snowing,’ she complained. But she got the keys, and the door screeched at the hinges as it swung open.
They all stood at the rail, looking across Explorer Street.
Moore had put a cardigan on, which wiped out all the years she’d clawed back with the make-up.
‘You didn’t see the light in the cemetery at all, did you?’ asked Shaw. ‘You can’t see past the houses from here.’
‘Does it matter?’ she said, looking at them all in turn. ‘There was a light in the cemetery, believe me.’ She lost her temper then, throwing an empty packet of cigarettes over the railing and stomping back into the flat.
They heard voices raised, then she reappeared, towing her daughter. She was in her mid-teens, with pancake make-up, clutching a man’s blue dressing gown and a copy of Persuasion.
‘This is Jilly, she saw the light. All right? When she got in she told me what she’d seen so I rang it in to Jamie — Jamie Driver, my brother-in-law. He’s on traffic but he wants to get into the CID, so he likes any tips. I didn’t want you lot taking Jilly down the nick, that’s all.’
They sat the girl down and asked her to describe what she’d seen. She’d been sitting outside the Lattice House with some of the girls from school, drinking cider. She’d gone into the cemetery with a boy. Her mother nodded at that, grim faced, and Shaw guessed that Jilly had already paid the price for that transgression. ‘We were just sitting talking,’ she said, glaring defiantly at her mother. ‘Round by the cedar trees.’
‘Time?’ said Valentine. ‘Incident report said just after three o’clock — that right?’
‘Two,’ she said. ‘Mum rang then — but like I had to get home, see Gav home too.’
Her mother looked skywards.
‘There’s a gap in the cemetery railings down by the water. Anyone can get in. We heard someone digging — like a spade. And — yeah — a light. But not much ’cos there was a moon.’
‘Tell us about the person who was digging,’ said Shaw.
‘We didn’t see anyone, not really. Like I said, we heard them. We just saw the light, down by the riverside. Near that big stone box — the tomb. Then we got out. Went home.’
Shaw and Valentine swapped glances.
‘How did you see the light, but not the person?’ said Shaw gently, turning to watch the snow fall.
‘She was in the hole. But Gav saw her for a second, just her head.’
‘She?’ said Shaw.
‘Yeah — I said that.’ She looked at her mother. ‘I said that. I did.’
Jade Moore passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Christ!’
‘And where can we find this Gav?’ said Valentine, taking out his notebook as she reeled off the details.
‘A question,’ said Shaw, holding up his hand. ‘Did you disturb her, Jilly? The woman in the grave. Did she know you were there?’
‘No way. Gav said it was like well creepy, and we should get out. So we slipped back round the trees and away. I didn’t get a proper look at her, but he said it was definitely a woman, ’cos she seemed to be really struggling with the spade.’
Outside, they let PC Bright go home to his bed. Valentine placed a call to the boyfriend — who lived up in the North End and was probably still in bed, according to Jilly. After a pause he left a message on an answerphone, telling the teenager to ring St James’s as soon as he picked up the call. Shaw stood in the porch of All Saints, trying to think it through. A woman. Which woman? It was a fact that didn’t fit his theory in so many different ways.
38
John Joe Murray’s body was earthbound, weighted at each limb, so that he lay spreadeagled on the floor of the old coal barn, spatchcocked, but with his head raised on the stone shelf so that he could see through the doorway to the north, and to open water. The cold, which seemed to be concentrated in the stone floor beneath his back, made his bones ache. But it wasn’t the cold or the swirling snow which blew in squalls over the grey sea that made him want to scream. It was the tide, edging towards the doorway. The flood boards had been taken away so that the view was clear, right to the cold horizon. Dusk was falling, the sea turning inky black. He looked at the old stone walls of the barn for the thousandth time, running his eye along the mark that clearly delineated the line of the highest tide. It was a foot above his head.
He’d come to after the attack in the hour before dawn, lying on the cold stone stairs, his hands and legs tied in rough fisherman’s rope. A light had seeped through the floorboards above. Calling out, he’d felt the blood in his throat, and the stab of pain over his eye where the blow had fallen. Mid-morning his stepson had come down the steps and stood looking out to sea. Then he’d turned and made a decision: ‘We’ll wait,’ he said. ‘For tonight.’ He’d given him tea to sip, and some tortilla. John Joe asked him why this was happening but Ian wouldn’t meet his eyes, let alone answer his questions. After that, time dissolved into patches of consciousness and nightmarish dreams. Mid-afternoon, Ian had given him some more food, then moved him to the floor of the barn and he’d lost consciousness again.
When he saw the first star — Venus, surely, rising with the moon — Ian had come down and removed the flood boards, taking them with him back up the stairs. He tried to raise his head to see the sea more clearly, but when he moved his skull he could hear — through the bone — the slight crunch of something broken in his jaw. The injury, the impact of the blow, had made his right eye swell, so that his vision was murky on that side. But with his left eye he could see the waves sharply. It was a spring tide, and it had already breached the protective arc of dunes, so that the waves he could see were breaking in open water. Not a wild sea, despite the snowstorm, but winter-choppy, flecked, disturbed. When he’d come to, the sand bars were standing out at sea, dusted with snow. But now they’d gone, the grey sea swallowing each one until all he could see through the door was a world of water, the horizon coming and going with the snow squalls.
The first wave that came through the door broke his resolve to stay calm. He screamed, the water white, foaming, laced with ozone, seething over his legs, then flowing out.