He stood, a knee joint cracking. ‘But there’s something else – on the back of the head.’
Shaw walked round, respecting his circle in the sand. The hair was parted at the crown, showing the scalp. Shaw took two strides forward and knelt. Hadden joined him and with a metal spatula parted the hair where blood had congealed. A wound, the colour of a maple leaf in the fall. No bone showing, but the flesh ruptured, rucked. Shaw bent closer and smelt the seawater in the man’s clothes, and the first hint of decay, the sweet aroma of evaporating sweat.
Valentine brushed aside the flaps to enter the tent. ‘Nothing on the sand,’ he said. ‘Chopper’s coming in with more manpower.’ He caught Hadden’s eye. ‘Your office radioed – they’ve got a portable generator from the lab.’
Shaw studied the victim’s face. The skin, as dead as pork rind, was tanned lightly, the features narrow and fine with the red double claw marks of a pair of spectacles on the bridge of the nose. The hair was well cut, short but with a foppish fringe which dragged down over one eye. Given time, Shaw could bring that face alive, iron out the swelling to the left side where the blow had fallen, lift the cheekbones, repack the features which had been stretched out in the terror of the victim’s final minutes.
Shaw stood, thinking that he’d missed that. ‘Justina will want to see him in situ.’
‘Low tide’s in two hours,’ said Hadden. ‘This isn’t a high point – it could be under water in five, six, possibly less. We’ll have to lift him then?’
It was a question, but there was no doubting the answer. If they let the tide wash over again the corpse might not be there next time, sucked down perhaps, or lost in the folds of sand. Even if they marked the spot they might lose him: heavy objects drifted in the liquid sand; wrecks wandered, sinking, resurfacing.
Valentine stepped outside, his radio crackling. Shaw left Hadden in the tent and went back to the cockle‐pickers.
Duncan Sly, the gangmaster, stepped forward to meet him, taking charge, displaying authority. His skin was like burnt leather, a smoked kipper, the product of a lifetime spent in the wind and rain. Despite a slight stoop which had come with age he was still the biggest man in the group – six one perhaps, but broad, a barrel chest, with fists that looked lifeless, just hanging from the arms. The seaman’s blue jacket was new, the lapels uncurled.
Sly’s account was straightforward. The five cockle boats were from Shark Tooth, the shellfish company that ran Gallow Marsh Farm’s oyster beds.
‘The sand was clean on the lee shore when we landed – no footprints, nothing. We keep an eye out for that, in case another gang’s been working our patch. And
Shaw buttoned up his coat and bent down to retrieve a razor shell from the sand, as sharp as a cut‐throat. He considered the coincidence that Shark Tooth owned Gallow Marsh Farm and ran the cockle boats, and filed it away with the other things that worried him.
The pickers stood around an impromptu fire: driftwood off the sandbank, old newspapers from one of the boats, and something else glowing on a bed of pebbles. ‘Coal?’ asked Shaw, knocking the charred wood with his boot.
‘Always bring a bag,’ said Sly. ‘It’s bitter out here late afternoon, we take breaks.’
Despite the warmth from the blaze they all stood stiffly. Sly thrust his hands out almost into the flames, then back into the pockets of his jacket. ‘We should work, otherwise it’s a wasted day.’
‘A few questions,’ said Shaw, shaking his head. ‘Then we’re going to have to ask you to go back to Wootton. This is a crime scene, we need to secure it. It’s the third unexplained death in the area in twenty‐four hours, Mr Sly. It may be a while before you can work here.’
Shaw saw glances exchanged. Besides Sly there were ten of them, two to a boat with Sly presumably in the larger one – a smart inshore fishing smack which had dropped anchor about twenty feet out. It sat at an angle now, beached, the radio mast tilting towards the moon which had appeared in a clearing blue sky. Six of the men were ethnic Chinese, standing together, smoking the same brand of cigarettes, looking everywhere but at Shaw.
No one spoke.
‘You can smoke now,’ said Shaw. Valentine’s hand jerked towards his pocket, then pulled back.
‘Any idea who the victim might be, Mr Sly?’ Shaw asked.
Sly shook his head, watching the flames. ‘I didn’t get close enough. I didn’t want to.’
Valentine nudged a pebble into the fire with his black slip‐on. ‘Anything unusual out here in the last few days? Any other pickers? Boats?’
‘This is our pitch, everyone knows that,’ said the man in the duffle coat. His voice was high, thin, but didn’t lack confidence.
‘Sorry – and who might you be?’ asked Valentine, with enough edge in his voice for them all to look up.
‘Andy Lufkin.’
‘So nothing?’ persisted Shaw. ‘Nothing unusual?’
‘Someone’s been dumping waste in yellow oil drums,’ said Shaw. He let Sly poke some more driftwood into the fire. ‘What have you seen?’
Sly took a deep breath. ‘We tend to keep our heads down.’
That sounded like a euphemism, Shaw thought. ‘Turn a blind eye?’ he said, a sympathetic pain suddenly running through the wound beneath the dressing.
‘Mind our own business,’ said Lufkin. Shaw wondered if he kept bouncing on his toes to try and look taller.
‘How about a child’s inflatable raft – a boat, in bright green colours?’ asked Shaw.
‘This weather?’ said Lufkin, and bit his lip.
‘Yes. This weather. Perhaps that’s what killed the bloke inside.’
They heard the thudding progress of a motor launch, hitting waves. Shaw could see Justina Kazimierz in the prow, letting saltwater spray her face.
Then Shaw’s mobile buzzed. A text message from DC Fiona Campbell at the hospital.
‘HOLT’S TALKING,’ it read.
They took the Eurocopter to the pad on top of the A&E department. Shaw radioed for the Land Rover to be brought there, then spent the rest of the flight with his forehead pressed to the window. He’d left Hadden and the CSI team working against the clock. Valentine had briefed the murder team back at St James’s and they were checking missing persons. But for now Shaw needed to focus on John Holt. He could see how the murder on Styleman’s Middle might be linked to the body in the raft – smuggling perhaps, trafficking, rival gangs fighting for a pitch. But if there was a link to the murder of Harvey Ellis in his pick‐up truck then it had eluded him. Two violent killings within a few miles, and a few hours, demanded that Shaw searched for one. And Holt was his key witness.
As they swung round in low cloud over the roof of the hospital Shaw tried to re‐focus on the line of cars in the snow that night. Harvey Ellis in the lead vehicle, John Holt in the Corsa behind Sarah Baker‐Sibley’s Alfa. He quickly re‐read the statement Baker‐Sibley had made when re‐interviewed that morning. Yes: she’d watched Holt go forward to the pick‐up truck. But had she taken her eyes off him? No. Not for a second.
But that didn’t mean John Holt was not important. He
Holt’s room was hospital‐hot – a cloying dry warmth suffused with the aromas of disinfectant, custard and stewed tea. The metal bed, the ubiquitous NHS bedside cabinet, the single seat, the grey linen washed a thousand times. As a doctor checked John Holt’s temperature Valentine tried not to touch anything, aware that his life would probably end one day in a room like this. He took a deep breath, trying to force air into shrivelled lungs, then retrieved the packet of cigarettes out of his raincoat pocket and dropped it in the bin.