'What about the old beach defences, the hunks of concrete? It would be difficult to come close to shore anywhere north within easy walking distance without risking the boat.'
'He has risked the boat recently, hasn't he? There's this scrape along the bow. He can't prove that he made it on the water towers. Cool about it, too, wasn't he? Calmly admitted that if we'd been an hour later he'd have repaired it. Not that repainting would have done him much good, the evidence would still be there. All right, so he manages to manoeuvre the boat as close in shore as he can, say, a hundred yards north of where she was found, makes his way along the shingle and into the trees and waits quietly in their shadow. Or he could have loaded the folding bicycle into the dinghy and landed at a safer distance. He couldn't cycle along the beach at high tide, but he'd have been safe enough on the coast road if he cycled without a light. He gets back to the boat and berths her again at Blakeney, just catching the high tide. No trouble about the knife or the shoes, he drops them overboard. We'll get the boat examined, with his consent, of course, and I want a single-handed chap to make that journey. If we've got an experienced sailor among our chaps, use him. If not, get someone local and accompany him. We've got to time it to the minute. And we'd better make inquiries of the crab fishermen down Cromer way. Someone may have been out that night and seen his boat.'
Oliphant said: 'Obliging of him, sir, to hand us his motive on a plate.'
'So obliging that I can't help wondering whether it isn't a smokescreen for something he didn't tell us.'
But as Rickards fastened his seat belt another possibility occurred to him. Lessingham had said nothing about his relationship with Toby Gledhill until he had been questioned about the Bumble trainers. He must know – how could he fail to? – that these linked the murder even more strongly to the headlanders and, in particular, to the Old Rectory. Was his new openness with the police less a compulsion to confide than a deliberate ploy to divert suspicion from another suspect? And if so, which of the suspects, Rickards wondered, was most likely to evoke this eccentric act of chivalry?
On Thursday morning Dalgliesh drove to Lydsett to shop at the village store. His aunt had shopped locally for most of her main provisions and he continued the practice, partly he knew to assuage a nagging guilt about having a second home, however temporary. The villagers did not on the whole resent weekenders despite the fact that their cottages remained empty for most of the year and their contribution to village life was minimal, but preferred them not to arrive with their car boots loaded with provisions from Harrods or Fortnum and Mason.
And patronizing the Brysons in their corner shop entailed no particular sacrifice. It was an unpretentious village store with a clanging bell on the door which, as the sepia photographs of the Victorian village showed, had hardly altered externally in the last 120 years. Inside, however, the last four years had seen more changes than in the whole of its history. Whether because of the growth of holiday homes or the more sophisticated tastes of the villagers, it now offered fresh pasta, a variety of French as well as English cheeses, the more expensive brands of jams, marmalade and mustard, and a well-stocked delicatessen, while a notice proclaimed that fresh croissants were delivered daily.
As he drew up in the side street, Dalgliesh had to manoeuvre past an old and heavily built bicycle with a large wicker basket which was propped against the kerb, and as he entered he saw that Ryan Blaney was just completing his purchases. Mrs Bryson was ringing up and bagging three brown loaves, packets of sugar, cartons of milk and an assortment of tins. Blaney gave Dalgliesh a glance from his bloodshot eyes, a curt nod, and was gone. He was still without his van, thought Dalgliesh, watching him load his basket with the contents of one carrier and hang the other two on the handlebars. Mrs Bryson turned on Dalgliesh her welcoming smile but did not comment. She was too prudent a shopkeeper to get a reputation as a gossip or to become too openly involved in local controversies, but it seemed to Dalgliesh that the air was heavy with her unspoken sympathy for Blaney and he felt obscurely that, as a policeman, she held him partly responsible although he was unsure precisely why and for what. Rickards or his men must have questioned the villagers about the headlanders, Ryan Blaney in particular. Perhaps they had been less than tactful.
Five minutes later he stopped to open the gate barring entry to the headland. On the other side a tramp was sitting on the bank which separated the narrow road from the reed-enclosed dyke. He was bearded and wearing a checked tweed cap beneath which two neat plaits of strong grey hair bound with a rubber band fell almost to his shoulders. He was eating an apple, slicing it with a short-handled knife and throwing the sections into his mouth. His long legs, clad in thick corduroy trousers, were stretched out widely in front of him almost as if he were deliberately displaying a pair of black, white and grey trainers, their obvious newness in stark contrast to the rest of his clothes. Dalgliesh closed the gate then walked over to him and looked down into a pair of bright and intelligent eyes set in a drawn and weatherbeaten face. If this was a tramp, the keenness of that first glance, his air of confident self-sufficiency and the cleanliness of his white rather delicate hands made him an unusual one. But he was surely too encumbered to be a casual hiker. His khaki coat looked like army surplus and was bound with a wide leather belt from which was suspended by string an enamel mug, a small saucepan and a frying pan. A small, but tightly packed backpack lay on the verge beside him.
Dalgliesh said: 'Good morning. I'm sorry if I seem impertinent, but where did you get those shoes?'
The voice that answered him was educated, a little pedantic, a voice, he thought, that might have once belonged to a schoolmaster.
'You are not, I hope, about to claim ownership. I shall regret it if our acquaintanceship, although no doubt destined to be brief, should begin with a dispute about property.'
'No, they're not mine. I was wondering how long they've been yours.'
The man finished his apple. He threw the core over his shoulder into the ditch, cleaned the blade of his clasp knife on the grass, and pushed it with care deep into his pocket. He said: 'May I ask if this inquiry arrives from – forgive me – an inordinate and reprehensible curiosity, an unnatural suspicion of a fellow mortal, or a desire to purchase a similar pair for yourself. If the last, I am afraid I am unable to help you.'
'None of these things. But the inquiry is important. I'm not being either presumptuous or suspicious.'
'Nor, sir, are you being particularly candid or explicit. My name, incidentally, is Jonah.'
'Mine is Adam Dalgliesh.'
'Then, Adam Dalgliesh, give me one good reason why I should answer your question and you shall have an answer.'
Dalgliesh paused for a moment. There was, he supposed, a theoretical possibility that here before him was the murderer of Hilary Robarts, but he did not for a moment believe it. Rickards had telephoned him the previous evening to inform him that the Bumbles were no longer in the jumble chest, obviously feeling that he owed Dalgliesh this brief report. But that did not mean that the tramp had taken them, nor did it prove that the two pairs were the same. He said: 'On Sunday night a girl was strangled here on the beach. If you recently found, or were given, those shoes or were wearing them on the headland last Sunday the police will need to know. They have found a distinct footprint. It is important to identify it if only to eliminate the wearer from their inquiries.'
'Well, that at least is explicit. You talk like a policeman. I should be sorry to hear that you are one.'
'This isn't my case. But I am a policeman and I know that the local CID are looking for a pair of Bumble trainers.'