Shaw didn’t answer. Valentine was wondering how hard he’d hit his mother.
‘Because it’s like Grandad has run away, too, just like I thought Dad did. But it’s worse, because I know he’s been near, watching, and there’s been so many times I wanted to speak to him but I couldn’t. So …’ He looked around, seeing his fixation as pathetic. ‘I used to come up here, though not for a while. But last night I came up for a lantern — a storm lantern. I knew where John Joe was — out at the old coal barn at Wells, on the marshes. Aunt Bea rang. I needed the light. And there was something right about taking Grandad’s lantern. It was like it made it official — a ceremony. Because it was going to be a trial, of sorts. And then an execution.
‘I found the lantern, but I also found something new — this.’ He held up the flask. ‘See? It’s got that picture on it, like the one on the glasses — the whalers. It must have been part of the set.’ He unscrewed the top of the flask and drank, coughing, not bothering to put the cap back on. ‘And it hadn’t been there before. And no one comes here now except me or Mum, so I thought she’d put it away, because she’s fond of the glasses but they get broke, and perhaps she wanted to make sure she’d always have the flask. But I thought — I could do with a drink if I was going to finish it, finish what we’d started. So I took it. I took it — and the lantern. I’d always promised Mum I wouldn’t take any thing. They gave me something when I was a kid — a tankard — but she said I had to leave everything else, because one day they’d sell it all, and I could have the money, help set up the restaurant, maybe.’
He laughed as if that was a fantasy.
‘Then, tonight, John Joe told the truth. It saved his life. He said that the three of them were waiting for Dad that night — him, Fletcher and Venn. But Fletcher lost his nerve, and Dad humiliated Venn — threw him in the open grave. Then Venn ran for it too. And John Joe couldn’t do it — not on his own — and I doubt he ever wanted to do anything …’ he searched for the word, ‘permanent.’
He drank some more, and on the still air Valentine caught the scent of malt whisky.
‘But he did say he’d seen Dad waiting by that big old stone box tomb — and that on the stone he could see two of the green glasses, and the flask. This flask. But when John Joe left Dad that night, he’d been drinking from it. His head thrown back. So how did it get back to the sea chest?’ It wasn’t really a question, because he had an answer.
He put both his hands on the sea chest, like a priest at an altar. ‘I asked Mum why she did it. Why she killed him. Tonight — after I hit her. She wouldn’t say. She said it would be better if I didn’t know.’ He shook his head and looked at Shaw and the shimmering orange light showed that his eyes were full of tears. ‘How can she think that, after all that’s happened to us? How could it be better not to know?’
He stood, lifting his jeans at the knees so that they were straight. ‘I don’t know where she is. In the river? She said she might — if she had the courage. Wherever she is it’s because of the lies. Her lies. I can forgive her — I can forgive everyone. I just want someone to stay. Not run away or hide. I wanted her to stay. I don’t think she heard me ask.’
They heard the single pulse of a police siren outside.
‘Can I see him?’ asked Ian, standing. ‘I’d like to see Grandad.’ He touched the sea chest. ‘I never have.’ What was astonishing then, thought Shaw, was that for the first time he could see Alby’s genetic input in Ian’s face: because he had his grandfather’s precise air of almost childlike curiosity.
45
They found Lizzie Murray on the Flensing Meadow — Jacky Lau, checking the footpath, saw her sitting on the box tomb through the trees, so still that the snow had collected on the shoulders of the overcoat she wore, and on her knees, so that for a second she confused her with the stone angel that stood nearby, its hands cupped to catch water, a single small finger broken. Visibility was just a few feet, so she’d retreated, sent a text to Twine and waited by the railings on the riverbank.
Valentine had appeared first, a narrow figure, sloping shoulders, the collar of his raincoat turned up, one hand at his neck, holding the lapels together. When he reached DC Lau he didn’t speak, but pointed towards the spot where he knew Nora Tilden’s grave lay, still open, covered in boards, ringed with scene-of-crime tape.
She nodded.
Shaw appeared almost supernaturally, as if he’d just risen straight up out of the ground, at the DS’s shoulder.
‘Well done,’ he said to Lau, then checked his mobile, the screen lit with a blue light.
‘Get close,’ he said to Valentine. ‘But don’t spook her.’
Shaw stepped off the path into the undergrowth around a line of Victorian headstones which had so far escaped the council’s exhumations. His boots sank down in nearly a foot of snow. The gentle sound, the compression of snow, flooded his mind with an image from childhood. The beach again, on Christmas Day. They’d always gone down to the slipway, to the cafe which opened even on that day. His father would buy teas and they’d take them down to the sand, and Shaw would play with whatever had been under the tree that morning — there’d always be something for the beach: a kite, a model aeroplane, a cricket bat. But that day the snow had lain right down to the water’s edge and they’d built a snowman, just in time before a fresh blizzard had swept in off the North Sea. He’d been dragged away crying, because he could see the grey figure of the snowman disappearing in the storm, the waves beginning to break around it.
And now he saw another figure. He stopped, and for a second he heard twigs breaking as Valentine circled the spot. It was the angel. He walked towards it and put a hand on the pitted stone of the face. Turning slightly, he saw Lizzie Murray, sitting on the tomb. It was startling in this black-and-white world how much the blood on her face stood out, a line from the corner of her mouth down her neck, as if her skull was cracking to reveal the flesh and blood beneath. The light caught the diamond stud in her ear.
He walked forward, aware that the wind that had brought the blizzard along the coast had gone. The air was absolutely still, the snow propelled by gravity alone, wandering down, as if each flake had to find its own way.
‘You’re hurt,’ he said.
She tightened the belt at the waist of the overcoat, but that didn’t stop her shivering.
‘Ian — he had every right.’
Shaw could see the wooden planking over the open grave. He stepped forward and pulled it clear so that the sudden black square of the pit was before them, widened by Tom Hadden’s team so that they could take their pictures of the soil profile.
‘It was a stupid place to meet,’ she said.
‘What did he really say when you told him at the bar that night — that there was going to be a child?’
‘I told the truth,’ she said. And something about that statement made her cover her mouth. Taking her fingers away she examined a trace of cold pearl lipstick.
‘He said he was happy for us. But we should talk — not later, now. I said I couldn’t — just couldn’t. The choir had something for me. I couldn’t just not be there. So I said we’d meet later — at eleven, here, while they collected glasses and cleared the pub. I gave him the two glasses and filled the hip flask for him to take. I thought he’d hang around, then wait after closing — but he went then. He hated the bar. He said it was like being in a zoo, being the one in the cage. But he never really gave anyone a chance to like him.’