He flicked the cutting. Lena looked out to sea. ‘Widely,’ she said, expertly picking at the hole in the logic.
But she’d walked into a trap. ‘Tom’s done a mass spectroscope analysis and the paint is one produced for this specific model of Mini by British Leyland at Long-bridge in 1991. That’s about eight thousand cars in the batch – most went for export. That’s a very small number, Lena. Think about it – eight thousand in the world. What are the chances that fleck of paint didn’t come from that Mini?’
He gave up waiting for his wife to react, and watched the waves breaking instead. ‘So – a gang of youths in a fatal car smash do a runner from the scene. We know Mosse was involved in such a gang. Less than a week later we find Tessier’s body under the Westmead – and there’s a flake of paint from the Mini on his clothing.’
Lena looked her husband in the eyes. She was always saddened at how much of their lives seemed to get sucked into this other world.
‘This is it,’ he said, raising both hands in frustration. ‘They know there’s a camera at the junction. They probably guessed you couldn’t do an ID on the registration
She laughed without a trace of humour. ‘And you think that makes sense?’ Shaw had been at New Scotland Yard when he’d met Lena in Brixton. She probably knew more about crime on the streets than he did. ‘Why kill a nine-year-old kid because he’s seen you respraying a car? They knew where he lived. A threat would have done – sweetened with a five-pound note. Why would the sight of a Mini being resprayed have registered with the kid? You’ll have to do better than that, Peter. Max’ll have you for breakfast.’
Shaw snagged an ankle round hers.
‘Have you told George?’ she asked.
‘No. I can’t. I don’t know why.’
She threw her head back. ‘He’s a boozer – not far short of an alcoholic – and a nicotine addict with an aversion to exercise and a weak bladder who lives alone. You’re married, with a daughter, have an addiction to exercise, an aversion to cigarettes and no apparent need for a bladder at all. I’ve seen you drink a pint of Guinness, but never two. And you don’t get on? That’s a big surprise, is it?’ She rubbed the salt on her cheek, suddenly desperate to be in the shower. ‘And, while we’re on the subject,
‘I don’t trust him,’ said Shaw, trying not to recognize how cruel she’d been to point that out. He was haunted by this simple conundrum: were Jack Shaw and George Valentine just old-fashioned coppers who’d bent the rules, or were they old-fashioned bent coppers? He was convinced now that Robert Mosse was involved in the murder of Jonathan Tessier – but he was aware that his guilt didn’t necessarily mean his father and George Valentine hadn’t twisted, or planted, the discredited evidence.
Lena stood, brushing sand from her skin. ‘You don’t trust him because you still think there’s a chance he and Jack planted that glove. Which would imply that George’s enthusiasm for reopening the case is simply a cover for his earlier dishonesty. Which means you don’t trust – didn’t trust – Jack, either. Who do you trust?’
Shaw narrowed his eyes, watching a light at sea. ‘I just want proof.’
Lena stretched her fingers out, making her hands into two bird’s feet. Shaw could see that she was struggling to keep her temper. ‘All right. What about doing something practical – getting this over with? And if you can’t do that, Peter – let’s see if we can live without it.’
She stood, took a step forward, looking out to sea. ‘Other than Robert Mosse, who is presumably fairly easy to find, where are the other three kids you and George have identified as members of this gang?’
‘They’re not kids.’
Shaw worked his hand into the muscles at the back of his neck. He’d been down this route, trying to track them down in the odd spare moment George Valentine wasn’t around. All he’d found were three dead ends.
‘One emigrated – two years after the murder. New Zealand. Another turned out a small-time crook – East Midlands somewhere. But he’s in a psychiatric unit now. The ringleader – well, the oldest – took up driving, car mechanics. He crops up in 1999 – drink-driving. Got off with a suspended sentence when the court was told he needs to drive as part of his job. Divorced, one child. Since the drink-driving he’s led a blameless life and appears a model citizen.’ He stood, kicked some sand. Out of his pocket he took his RNLI pager, checked the signal and the battery – a little ritual before sleep.
‘And he’s got a steady job. Even if it’s a peculiar job,’ he added. ‘A touch of the macabre – he drives a hearse.’
Monday, 6 September
The SDM crew had that Monday-morning feeling, so that when the foreman, Joe Beadle, lifted the manhole cover, the stench of the air they’d all soon be breathing made them choke. It was always bad like this in hot, dry weather. The storm-drain system, which took rainwater off the streets and out to sea, was almost empty, so anything down there that shouldn’t be down there had time to rot between the tides. And the rats moved in and out of the sewerage system, rivers of them, following some phantom piper.
The crew’s job was storm-drain maintenance – SDM. They swept out the channels, checked the brickwork vaulting for cracks and settling, then cleared the gratings which stopped anything too big being brought into the system from the sea. There were twenty miles of storm sewers under Lynn, a lot of it medieval. So they had jobs for life, the three of them, and they never complained to anyone but each other, because the money was good and they spent half their time drinking tea, or at the greasy spoon by the dock gates. And they set their own hours, because they had to work between the tides, which was why they were here now, at just after six.
Trance, the kid they’d taken on a year earlier from
But he was young – just seventeen – and they needed a gofer, and someone to send down the narrow vaults. Trance took one last look along the narrow street they were in, full of closed shops, and lowered himself athletically into the hole, searching with his boots for the metal rungs of the ladder. Then he jumped, and they heard a splash, but there was no bass note, nothing to indicate depth. Beadle clapped once. ‘Well done, kid.’ He turned to Freeman, who was black, but the life underground had robbed his skin of its sunny lustre so that he looked grey, like a dead fish. ‘You next.’
Beadle, last down, pulled the cover closed and they were in the dark until the torches came on – and then they were in their world, and despite the stink, they felt better. Trance whistled, picking up rubbish with a grip on a stick, popping it in a black bin liner. They walked at a steady pace, Freeman searching the curved brick arch of the tunnel for signs of cracking, ticking boxes on a clipboard that hung from a lanyard on his belt. Beadle checked a map in a cellophane wallet. The tunnel they were in was Victorian and ran for nearly 400 yards parallel with the quay. Overhead they could feel the early rush-hour traffic, a visceral rumble which made their guts vibrate. A thin trickle of water ran at the centre of the channel, but the rest was dry, the bricks stained and bleached by the daily inundation of salty seawater.
Beadle checked his watch: 6.04 a.m. They had two
Trance’s torch beam shone directly ahead, not strong enough to reach the distant sharp turn. The rats, uncannily, were always on the edge of the light, a faint shimmering movement, retreating as the men advanced. But the noise was there if you listened for it, a feral, high-pitched chorus, just on the borderline of the inaudible. Trance used the pick-up stick to bag a few dead rats, a supermarket bag, and the shreds of a shell-suit. They trudged on, all of them smoking now, the turning in the tunnel coming into view, a graceful 90-degree angle in arched brick. They regrouped and Beadle poured coffee – black – because the milk always went off in the summer and anyway the acrid, unadulterated caffeine helped take away the taste of salt on their lips.