Detective Chief Superintendent Max Warren kept a tidy office on the third floor. He was a Londoner who’d come north with a reputation for tackling street crime in the capital. He’d played rugby until settling for weekends at the golf club, but his face was still dominated by a serially broken nose. For a man who had once succeeded in projecting a tangible sense of menace, Shaw was always surprised how slight he was, a narrow neck on narrow shoulders, the loose skin mottled with liver spots. Warren had arrived fifteen years earlier to administer an injection of adrenaline into the sleepy West Norfolk Constabulary. But the operation had back‐fired – allowing several gallons of sleeping draught to flood back into the superintendent’s veins.
Shaw didn’t sit and Warren didn’t ask him to, merely eyeing the spot where Shaw’s tie should have been.
‘Keep it simple, Peter,’ he said. ‘It’s not a puzzle. It’s two nasty murders on the same night.’
Shaw thought about pointing out the assumptions behind that summary but let the moment pass. Warren was firmly of the school that felt police officers needed university degrees as much as they needed a diploma in tap‐dancing. So smart‐arse backchat was best avoided.
‘DS Valentine’s got a good nose for low life – unsurprisingly: let him use it. I expect him to make a major
On the wall behind Warren’s desk was a framed line‐up of uniformed officers at Hendon – the Met’s training college. Warren was centre‐stage. Shaw’s father was on the row behind.
‘Dad always rated him,’ said Shaw, forcing himself to be fair.
Warren ignored the comment. ‘I’d like a position check on the inquiry daily. From you. OK?’
‘Sir.’
Warren looked up over half‐moon glasses, studying Shaw’s face. ‘Your eye?’
‘Robinson says ten days,’ said Shaw. ‘Chances are good.’
Dr Hugh Robinson was the force’s senior medical adviser. ‘Right,’ said Warren. ‘But what the fuck does he know, eh?’
‘Sir.’
That was it. Shaw, wordlessly dismissed, left Warren reading the morning papers, the Financial Times spread across his blotter. He remembered what his father had always said about DCS Warren – that he’d end his days in a bungalow at Cromer, chasing kids who stole gnomes from his rockery. But then his father had been jealous of Warren’s rapid rise and the aura of New Scotland Yard.
Shaw cleared his calls, reviewed his budget for the
‘The Emerald Garden, Jubilee Parade, Westmead Estate,’ said Shaw, getting in. ‘And remind me – why do we think Stanley Zhao’s worth a visit?’
Valentine pretended to watch the traffic, working on an answer.
‘The Chinese community…’ he said carefully, ‘is involved in cockle‐picking on the sandbanks. The bloke washed up on Ingol Beach may have died of many things – but natural causes isn’t one of them. It’s just worth a second look. Playing the odds. Percentages.’
Shaw raised an eyebrow, turning to watch as a gritter lorry swept past, the salt sizzling as it spilt across the road. He let Valentine drive in silence while he worked through a sheaf of papers from the murder team – calls they’d made, information gathered so far on the members of the snowbound convoy. He rifled through until he got to the file on Stanley Zhao.
DC Mark Birley, a former uniform branch man bumped up for his first CID case, had conducted a phone interview with the secretary of the Burnham & District Round Table, Zhao’s regular Monday night customer. Shaw flicked through a transcript, impressed by Birley’s meticulous questions and annotated answers, as Valentine swung the Mazda through the rush‐hour traffic.
They got to Westmead in ten minutes. It was clear that Jubilee Parade was one that had been rained on with some persistence. At one end was a pub called the Red, White
As Shaw and Valentine pulled up the gently falling rain turned suddenly to sleet, then a peppering of snow. The Emerald Garden was in the middle of the parade, a takeaway only, bare floorboards visible through the mesh covering the glazed door. Stanley Zhao opened up for them. He didn’t seem surprised to see them. He didn’t seem anything to see them. Shaw tried not to let the word inscrutable form in his head.
Zhao led the way into the kitchen through a hanging curtain of blue beads. Spotless woks dotted a bank of gas rings, and a set of chopping boards was criss‐crossed with a lifetime’s worth of knife wounds. The only smell was Jeyes’ Fluid.
There was one other knife wound. Zhao had a scar running from his hairline to his cheek, via an eye socket. Shaw had missed it the previous night in the half‐light inside the Corsa. Zhao’s eyes blinked meekly behind metal‐rimmed glasses, and when his lips parted he revealed a line of identical teeth, each one as white as toothpaste. He stood with his back to one of the kitchen’s metal tables, and Shaw thought he’d been right about his height: six feet two, possibly three.
Mr Zhao knew why they were there. He handed Shaw his passport, and a Xeroxed copy of a birth certificate. ‘I have been asked before,’ he said, by way of explanation.
Shaw flicked the passport open. Born Kowloon 1959. Married Hong Kong 1991. Cook. No distinguishing marks.
Shaw raised his eyebrows and touched his own cheek. Zhao pointed at the passport. ‘Inside,’ he said. And it was. A clipping from the Lynn News for 2006. ‘Takeaway owner knifed by burglar.’ Zhao touched the scar. He’d been in Lynn a year, he said, straight from Hong Kong, and he hadn’t expected crime to be so bad.
‘Did they get him?’ asked Shaw. ‘The burglar.’
‘No.’
‘You should get the passport updated,’ said Shaw, handing it back.
They heard a footfall upstairs, and then the distant mosquito‐buzz of a radio.
Shaw apologized if Zhao had been asked the questions before, but they were tying up loose ends, following procedure. Zhao smiled as if he believed them.
‘Remind me,’ said Shaw, trying to recall the details of DC Birley’s interview with the Round Table. ‘Why were you on the old coast road at five o’clock last night?’
Valentine began to walk round the kitchen, inspecting
Zhao’s story was a carbon copy of the one he’d given Valentine at Gallow Marsh Farm. He delivered a large takeaway dinner to a meeting of the Burnham & District Round Table every Monday evening. The order never changed: fourteen chicken chow meins, a vegetable chow mein, ten portions of prawn toast, one of vegetable spring rolls. They met in the village hall at Burnham Overy Staithe. He had a contact number. Shaw remembered the warmth in the van, the fug of soya and sunflower oil.
‘It’s a long drive – but good customers, a big order,’ added Zhao.
‘Please,’ said Shaw, playing for time, looking around. ‘Finish your breakfast.’ On a side table stood a large porcelain cup, the light green liquid inside it giving off a thin scent. Beside it was a white plate, a fork, and the remains of an omelette, a brown smear on the china. A bottle of Daddies Sauce, catering size, stood on the counter.
Valentine took over. ‘You saw the other drivers stranded on Siberia Belt, Mr Zhao, at the farmhouse? Did you recognize any of them? Customers perhaps?’
Zhao shook his head, tucking in a stray piece of omelette at the corner of his mouth. ‘People all look the same to me.’ Valentine didn’t miss the joke, but he didn’t smile either. Finished, Zhao picked up his plate and took it to a metal sink.