Ian watched the sea, a big wave buckling up on the grey horizon. ‘So that left you and Sam Venn?’ he said, edging a step higher, away from the water.
John Joe pulled frantically at the fastened wrist so that blood appeared where the skin was breaking.
‘Sam did it. He just walked out in the moonlight, before I could stop him, so Pat could see him. And Pat just smiled — like he was expecting it. He just sat there in his silk shirt, looking at Sam. He’d brought a couple of glasses with him — the green, etched ones, and a hip flask. He’d drink a bit, then kind of wince, then smile.’
‘Hip flask?’
Before John Joe could answer the sea washed in, the seventh wave, the one that surges forward up the beach. Two feet, three feet, swirling round the room so that Murray was gone, lost in the water, which wasn’t green any more but a dark blue, and black in the shadows. And when it sucked out he was just lying there, swamped, so Ian stepped off the ladder and got him by the shirt at the neck and held him up, so their faces were close. He could smell his stepfather’s hair, the natural oils set against the sharp saltiness of the water.
‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘The hip flask.’ He put his hand to his back pocket and slipped something out to hold just a few inches from John Joe’s drenched face. It was a silver hip flask. The design was unusual — a silver stopper and a silver base, but the main body was of green glass, thick and old, with an etched picture of a whale pursued by a boat, the harpoonist’s arm tensed for the lethal shot.
John Joe’s eyes didn’t understand. ‘Yeah, like the glasses — old Melville’s green glasses. Lizzie must have given it to Pat.’
Ian unscrewed the top and put it to John Joe’s lips. It was another kindness, and it gave him time to think. The flask contained a malt, and John Joe choked, but he drank too. Ian cut the other wrist free, then the ankles, and dragged his stepfather’s body to the steps and up, clear of the sea, which had begun to turn in the room now like a whirlpool. He held his stepfather under the arms so that the older man lay on him, and the water seeped down.
It took Ian a minute to work it out, so that the past he’d imagined was transformed, like a landscape through tinted glass. ‘Just tell me, John Joe,’ he said. ‘All of it.’
John Joe’s chin vibrated with the cold, so Ian left him and came back down with a blanket.
‘I stepped out into the open too,’ he said, holding the corner of the warm wool to his throat. ‘But Pat hardly noticed, because Sam went up to him and he took Pat’s hand, like taking a child’s, and he put it on his face, so that he could feel the damage that he’d been born with. Sam didn’t say anything — I think he was too scared to speak. But I knew what it meant, and I think Pat did somehow, too. That it was evil, cousins together, and this was like God’s punishment. I think that got to Pat — which was a victory for Sam, because nothing got to him. Not the taunts, not the way people looked at him. Nothing.’
They sat together for a few minutes without speaking. Outside the tide was moving rocks, so that intermittently the whole building resonated with the boom of stone on stone.
‘He slapped Sam with that hand, the hand he’d touched him with,’ said John Joe, breaking their silence. ‘He slapped him hard. Pat was a big man, powerful, and it took Sam down. And then Pat got Sam’s leg and he dragged him through the spoil around Nora’s grave to the edge of the pit and he let him slip in. I heard the splash — ’cos by then it was full of water. Sam was screaming, pleading, but when he went in he was silent. I remember that because I heard the choir again — from the pub.
‘I saw Sam’s hands come up, scrabbling in the wet soil.’ John Joe shook his head at the memory. ‘Pat stamped on them, kicked soil in. Then he laughed and turned to me, walking away from the grave. Sam got out then, hauled himself out, and ran — along the river …so there was just me.’
Ian gave him the hip flask to drink again.
‘I ran at Pat and swung the billhook; he swayed back, so I missed him. He just stood there, laughing in my face. I dropped the hook. I left him there, alive. I swear to God I did. I ran. Like we all ran.’
Ian held John Joe’s head.
‘Later — when Pat disappeared we thought he’d just got tired of Lizzie. Then the baby came and we thought that explained it. He’d run for it too. And the three of us thought we’d helped push him away. Helped him run.’
John Joe looked at his wrists where the blood was beginning to ooze from the wounds made by the rope.
‘When they found Pat — Pat’s bones — they thought I’d done it: both of them, Fletcher and Venn. I said I hadn’t. I said I’d always told the truth, but they didn’t believe me.’
Outside the door the snow had suddenly stopped, leaving the air clear, the horizon as sharp as a knife edge. ‘I don’t know who killed him, Son — I really don’t.’
Ian looked at the hip flask in his hand.
‘I do,’ he said.
39
Shaw waited in the Porsche for Valentine, parked in the shadow of the industrial crane on the Lynn town quay side. Angular, black and towering, it stood out against a field of frosty stars. It seemed to reflect Shaw’s mood of gloomy introspection. It had not been a good day: it had taken them until mid-afternoon to track down ‘Gav’ — aka Gavin Andrew Peck — their one vital witness to the reopening of Nora Tilden’s grave. He had been staying at a friend’s house after an all-night party and had then gone to the Arndale Centre to hang out with friends in the warmth of the shopping mall. His recollection of the woman he’d seen that night was limited to her gender: he could recall no other detail. They’d taken him back to St James’s but his memory had shown no signs of sharpening up. Could he estimate the age of the woman? ‘Not really — but it was obvious she’d never used a spade before. She was really struggling.’ It was the one cogent observation they’d obtained.
After taking a formal statement from Peck, Shaw and Valentine had been called to separate preparatory interviews with DI ‘Chips’ McCain — now in charge of the investigation into Bobby Mosse. McCain’s approach, at least in Shaw’s case, had been clinical, professional, and chilling. He and Valentine had not compared notes.
The bonnet of the Porsche was hot and free of snow, but as Valentine levered himself out of the car, the motion set free a lump of ice which slid down the windscreen. Shaw batted it aside with the wipers, hardly allowing it to displace the image that he’d begun examining in his head: a woman, alone, digging in the shadows of the Flensing Meadow, down into that crowded grave. Not just an image — a noise as well, the slicing of a spade through clay and grit. Which woman? Lizzie Tilden was involved in the search for her missing husband John Joe, so they’d leave her for the morning. Bea Garrison they’d see tonight, at her B amp;B on the coast at Wells.
Shaw focused on the Christmas lights along the front: sharp pinpoints of festive colour in the sea air which usually lifted his mood. The mobile chip shop had parked in a lay-by, side-on to the water, half a dozen figures crowded by the serving hatch, cradling teas.
Then his mobile rang and he saw it was home, so he picked it up, and knew instantly that it was his daughter, not his wife, because she took a breath before starting to speak.
‘Dad? It’s OK — Mum said. We’ll go next year.’ Static blurred the next sentence.
‘Sorry — I just can’t.’ He hated apologies, thinking that they were what they were, valueless in themselves. What he needed to do was make sure that next year he kept his promise, and took her to see Santa floating in on the tide at Wells, and that he wasn’t stuck in a car waiting for George Valentine to get him a tray of chips. And he left the real question in the air: would Fran want to see Santa next year, or had they missed the moment, another slice of childhood he’d never revisit?