Valentine’s pulse was a fading tattoo, so Shaw didn’t wait for the ambulance. He carried him, unconscious now, across the sports field, shocked by how light he was; just a sack of fragile bones. He used one of John Holt’s kitchen knives to open the wound, squeezing out as much of the clear poison as he could, then bandaging the hand with a tea towel. The ambulance finally appeared out of the teeming rain, and he carried him into the back. Valentine’s face was dotted with sweat so Shaw helped the paramedic get his raincoat off. Grasping the collar, he’d been oddly moved to glimpse a name tag inside: G. VALENTINE – like a child’s.
He’d left a PC guarding the pavilion, the doors locked, with orders to leave it that way until a unit arrived from Linton Zoo, near Cambridge.
John Holt was waiting in the squad car.
‘What’s happened?’ he said.
Shaw wasn’t in the mood to soften any of the blows. ‘He’s been bitten by one of your spiders. He may live,’ he said. ‘He may die.’
Holt buried his head in his hands. ‘Tell me,’ said Shaw. ‘Tell me quickly.’
‘They’re Indian white jackets – fifteen hundred pounds a time. It was Terry Brand’s last consignment. Izzy found the canisters floating down by the oyster beds that Monday
‘Save it,’ said Shaw, cutting him off.
He watched them drive Holt down towards the coast road, and he noticed the old man didn’t look back. One of the murder squad had brought Shaw’s Land Rover out to the scene and he unlocked it now, slid into the seat, turned on the heating and closed his eyes. From here he could see the sea in the light of dawn, brown, like over‐brewed milky tea. It was a sepia world, sand brown and salt white.
He should get back to St James’s. He’d have to make a report to DCS Warren. He put both hands over his face and rubbed the skin. What would he feel if George Valentine died? That’s what Lena would want to know. At the moment he felt nothing. Shock? Maybe. Loss.
He had to get a grip. Duncan Sly would be ready for an interview soon at St James’s. They had the forensics, his blood‐soaked clothes were damning enough without the evidence of Izzy Dereham and John Holt. It would be tough; but he couldn’t see how Sly could escape a murder charge. And yet…
He couldn’t forget that pathetic name tag on Valentine’s collar. It was as if the jerky handwritten capital letters were the only way the world could know who he was. He let that idea just float; an image swimming in and out of
He jerked back into the present, rubbing cold hands into his face, shivering. RFA. Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Not anyone’s initials at all. Why hadn’t that jarred at the time? He pressed knuckles into his eye sockets. Then the first thing he saw when he opened them was the picture Sasha Holt had given him, stuck to the passenger side of the dashboard: sycamore helicopters rising from a blazing fire. He touched it with a finger where the flames were red, and felt his blood surge, his heartbeat racing.
He heard an engine race and saw Tom Hadden’s 4x4 coming down the track from the cottage. Rainwater, coming down off the hill, had filled the ditches on either side. Plumes of water rose from the tyres as he rode through puddles. Shaw flashed his lights. The two stopped door‐by‐door and Shaw lowered the window.
Hadden did the same.
‘Jump in,’ said Shaw. ‘And bring your box of tricks.’ Hadden splashed his way round to the passenger side of the Land Rover. Inside, the door closed, the sound of the falling rain was deafening.
‘Any news on George?’ said Hadden.
‘He’s with the paramedics. There’s nothing I can do.’
‘OK,’ said Hadden, backing off, hearing the stress in Shaw’s voice.
He put the Land Rover into first and pressed on towards the cottages, negotiating the water‐filled potholes and ruts until he could park beside the darkened house.
‘When I found Holt slumped at the wheel of the Corsa I loosened his collar,’ said Shaw, killing the engine. ‘There was a name tag on the jacket– at least that’s what I thought it was. RFA.’
‘Right. Royal Fleet Auxiliary,’ said Hadden. ‘Merchant Navy.’
‘Yeah. Except Holt was never in the Merchant Navy. It wasn’t his jacket – it was Duncan Sly’s. The blood‐soaked material you found outside Sly’s boat was Holt’s jacket.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘They swapped at the scene. Holt had to stay around, get his car out on the coast road to box in Baker‐Sibley’s Alfa, play his part. But Sly could get away from the scene. All he needed to do was walk to the far end of Siberia Belt and take in the AA no‐entry sign. So they swapped jackets. It was Holt’s that was covered in blood. So he was at the scene after the fatal blow was struck – which means Izzy Dereham lied when she said she’d seen Ellis alive on Siberia Belt when they drove away from Gallow Marsh. I think she and Holt tried to frame Sly. They were family, and they were doing it for the kids. Sly was a loner. No family, no ties. Why not let him go down for it – especially as he’d planned the whole thing, recruited them, bribed them?’
‘It makes sense,’ said Hadden.
‘Why do we need time?’
‘Because it’s getting warmer,’ said Shaw. ‘And we still need to prove Holt was on the spot when Ellis died.’ He got out of the Land Rover and met Hadden in the headlights.
Hadden shook his head. ‘But I’ve told you – we didn’t find the boots.’
Shaw placed both hands on Hadden’s shoulders and smiled. ‘But I think I can find you the footprint we need.’
He looked up at the side of the house. The sycamore and the magnolia stood in the lee of the storm, both stunted now they’d been pruned, like scarecrow’s hands.
‘Your boys couldn’t find any footprints here because the ground’s frozen – has been since Monday night. But remember that on the Sunday Holt was here, pruning the sycamore, to make sure his little granddaughter didn’t have any more nightmares. Spring was in the air, it was mild and sunny.’
Shaw gave Hadden the surfer’s smile. Rain dripped off the end of Hadden’s nose.
‘If he’s our man, he pruned the tree wearing the boots he wore on Siberia Belt. And he did it before the frost bit. It doesn’t matter if he’s destroyed the boots, dumped them, whatever. Because we know what the print looks like.’
They both dropped to their haunches by the bole of the tree. Snow still lay on the ground, pockmarked with raindrops.
‘It’s under the snow,’ said Shaw. ‘Right here.’
‘What do we do?’ asked Shaw.
‘Try and keep the rain off while I apply some warm air – I use this to shift dust. But it’ll do.’ He played the dryer on the snow.
Shaw fetched a tarpaulin from the Land Rover and they hung it over the spot from the lower branches of the tree. Within minutes black, frost‐shattered clods of earth had begun to poke through the white crust of the frozen ground.
‘There,’ said Shaw, pointing at two depressions beginning to emerge. ‘That’s where he set the ladder.’
Then a pair of footprints began to appear. Hadden used the fixative spray, securing the friable sandy soil in place as the ice melted. He prepared the dental stone to pour into the print and make a cast. The first footprint was useless – the boot had slid in the wet soil and smeared the pattern. But the second was stable, once sharp, but softening now the frost was melting. Until the last moment Shaw thought he was wrong. The heel was the last part of the print to be revealed: but finally the impossibly delicate bone‐structure of the imprinted fern leaf emerged, as unique as a blood‐soaked fingerprint.