Death's Door (17 page)

Shaw felt better, energized. But his memory threw up a sound, not an image this time. The chief constable’s grey Daimler, the engine ticking. It had been unpleasant giving Brendan O’Hare
good
news. Telling him the North Norfolk Constabulary had wasted £400,000 on an abortive mass screening was most definitely
bad
news.

Shaw’s mobile trilled and he checked a text from Valentine. OVERTIME. I’VE FOUND THE BOATMAN. WELLS RNLI – 4.

When Valentine had mentioned trying to track down the ferryman who’d taken the
Andora Star
out to East Hills on the day of the murder it had seemed like an academic loose end. Now, suddenly, it seemed like a very good idea. Any idea looked like a good idea. The ferryman had been one of the first on the scene when White’s body was found. Inexplicably he’d not been asked to make a full formal statement back in ’94 – just a cursory one page outline. That mistake had been compounded by Shaw’s own error: leaving him out of the request to attend at St James’ with the other witnesses.

I’LL JOIN YOU. Shaw went back into the flat and worked through the case files on Hadden’s desk until he found a snapshot of Joe Osbourne. He put it in his wallet, patted it once, and left without a word.

FIFTEEN

T
he lifeboat house at Wells stood a mile from the town, out along The Cut where the channel met the sea, on a bluff of sand. Beyond it the beach opened up, miles of it, running west and dotted with a Sunday crowd, families clustered round tents and windbreaks. Most of the beach huts on the apron of the pinewoods were just in shadow – many open, deckchairs clustered by the wooden steps, which led up into each. The tide had turned, the water draining into Wells’ harbour like sand in an egg-timer, covering a patchwork of sandbars which had been drying in late afternoon heat. Dogs ran in great circles, lapping up the space. A few kites flew, catching the breeze which always sprang up with the turn of the tide, their plastic tails crackling like firewood.

Shaw tapped on the hot roof of the Mazda, startling Valentine, who was listening to the local news. The car was parked by the lifeboat house, with a view north over the sea. The DS got out, as stiff as one of the deckchairs along the sand.

‘You didn’t need to come – I can do this,’ said Valentine. ‘The text was just for info.’ He flexed a hand, trying to get the circulation back. ‘Radio’s picked up the appeal on the cyanide capsule,’ said Valentine. ‘The papers will run it tomorrow. BBC website too.’ They listened as the local commercial radio news broadcast the item. Anyone who knew anything about a supply of cyanide capsules, possibly wartime, should contact police at Lynn. Any such information would be treated in confidence and could assist police in ongoing enquiries.

‘Good work,’ said Shaw. He took a deep breath: ‘I’ve just been with Tom – mass screening results are through.’ He caught Valentine’s eyes – dark, but catching the light. ‘No matches. Not one.’

‘What?’ It was closest Valentine would get to a shout. ‘You’re kidding.’ Sweat prickled his skin, making him shiver.

‘No, I’m not.’ Shaw looked away, allowing a flare of anger to subside. ‘He’ll kick the tyres on the results, but I think we may have run out of luck.’

Valentine looked into the mid-distance, letting the sea air seep out of his lungs. They’d considered the possibility of failure, but only in an academic sense, as the last possible option. He’d spotted the ‘we’ in Shaw’s sentence, although he seriously doubted that the DI’s career would take as big a tumble as his. He was eight years from retirement, and he’d failed to get past a promotion panel three times in the last eighteen months. This wasn’t a bad result for DS George Valentine: it was a disastrous one.

‘Roundhay?’ he asked, a flicker of hope making him pause, a match struck, a fresh Silk Cut in his lips.

‘First up. No match. Not close. Our next best shot has to be Joe Osbourne. He fits the bill: jealous boyfriend. Then an unhappy marriage. Tussle with a hooker.’

‘It was a bit of push and shove. And why’d he kill White?’

‘Maybe Marianne was one of White’s many conquests. Maybe she was being blackmailed and he did the noble thing – turned up to put the frighteners on White.
And
he could have helped Marianne Osbourne take that pill before setting out to work. I’ve fixed us up with an interview first thing tomorrow at the house. Station later if we get anywhere.’

‘Back to square one,’ said Valentine. ‘That’s where we’ve got.’ He didn’t want to sound bitter, or accusatory, but he failed on both counts. They’d already talked to Joe Osbourne. What did Shaw think they’d get at the second attempt – a confession?

Shaw walked down a slope to the sand and looked at his boots. ‘If he is our East Hills killer then he has to be a swimmer, there and back again. So we need to check that out. It’s all very well posing on the beach. Could Osbourne swim the distance? We always knew that was a loophole. That’s my fault. I got seduced by the numbers. Seventy-five out, seventy-four back.’

Valentine looked out to sea over the marshes. At high tide East Hills was a sliver of sand. The pine trees that marked its spine seemed to be set on the horizon itself – impossibly distant. He’d no more try to swim to it as walk to it. He couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious: ‘He’s an asthmatic. When we told him his wife was dead he passed out. You serious about this?’

Shaw didn’t answer.

Valentine rubbed his hand over his jaw, the sound of skin rubbing on the five o’clock shadow like sandpaper. He still found it hard to believe they’d struck out on the DNA tests. ‘There’s no chance we fucked up the mass screening?’ It wasn’t a question, more a lament.

‘We’ll think it through later but Tom reckons there’s only one possible way out. Maybe there’s a mistake in the DNA profiles of the five men we took off East Hills who are dead. One of the samples could be duff – maybe someone thought they’d keep a family secret. Or there’s a family secret that’s a secret even to the family. But it’s got to be a long shot.’

‘Any longer than Joe Osbourne turning into Mark Spitz?’ asked Valentine.

A sudden wave broke on the edge of the sand and looking up they saw one of the small fishing boats motoring out along The Cut. ‘Anyway, all that can wait for tomorrow,’ said Shaw. ‘Osbourne’s at home and Paul’s keeping tabs. Meanwhile, let’s do what we should have done eighteen years ago and interview the ferryman.’

Valentine handed Shaw a file, inside of which was a one-page statement. Shaw looked at the close-lettered type and the heat of the day seemed to suck any vitality he had left out through his feet and into the sand. He didn’t really have the energy to read it.

‘Summary?’

‘His name’s Philip Coyle. Known as ‘Tug’. I think I met him once – someone nicked some gear out of his boat and I must have interviewed him. He’s got a small inshore fishing business here at Wells – mainly shellfish, flogging scallops and stuff to the posh pubs for the tourists to eat. He’s on the RNLI crew. Grandfather before him. I checked with the coxswain for personal details: he lives alone in Lynn. Married about fifteen years ago, divorced since. One child, a boy, lives with the mother.’

Valentine cracked the single page of A4 so that it was rigid. ‘Back in ’ninety-four he took the boat out to East Hills, dropped off the seventy-five ticket holders, carried on to Morston where he picked up twenty-eight to go out to Blakeney and see the seals. He ran them back, then came back to East Hills. He gave a statement here at Wells – we didn’t take him back to St James’ with the rest. And we didn’t call him on Saturday for a review. A loophole. So we haven’t got his DNA sample either.’

They’d just opened the main doors of the boathouse and the first group of visitors was up on the observation platform, looking down into the cockpit of the
Mary Louise.
Paintwork gleamed in blue, red and gold. The smell was military: polished wood, brass; the air dustless, laced with engine oil and beeswax.

‘Tug’ Coyle was in the small tractor at the prow, used to tow the lifeboat down the ramp for launches, checking oil levels in the engine. He jumped down, more nimble than his thirty-six years should have allowed, but heavy nonetheless, carrying muscle and big bones, with most of his power in his shoulders, short neck and arms. Shaw was immediately reminded of a crab.

He smiled at them both, shook hands with fleshy fingers, and nodded twice at Shaw, the green eyes intelligent and searching. ‘
Hunstanton Flyer
?’ he asked, the voice heavy with a Norfolk burr. The Flyer was the name of the RNLI’s hovercraft.

‘Toy compared to this,’ said Shaw. The prow of the
Mary Louise
towered over them.

‘How can I help?’ asked Coyle, stooping easily to close the metal butterfly wings of a toolbox.

Valentine’s eye had been caught by one of the photographic portraits framed on the wall. This image was in pride of place, in a heavy wooden frame with gilt carving and behind a thick layer of glass. The citation under the picture read:

Archibald ‘Tug’ Coyle MBE

Coxwain 1938–52

RNLI Gold Medal

He tapped the edge of the picture.

‘Sure,’ said Coyle, nodding. ‘Grandfather. Not that he had much to do with us – Dad was the black sheep of the family and Tug was a funny old bugger. But I got the name, and the boat, so I shouldn’t complain.’

Shaw knew of Tug Coyle, a legend on the coast but many years before his time. One of those iconic lifeboat men who always, in retrospect, seem too good to be true. He noted that the grandson hadn’t just got the nickname and the boat – he noted the genetic inheritance too, the ‘lifelong look’, the one facet of the face that would hold the family likeness. In this case it was the bone structure of the skull, the way the eye sockets were set firmly apart, the bridge of the nose notably wide.

‘This about East Hills?’ Tug said.

‘You were running the
Andora Star
that day,’ said Shaw. ‘I just wanted to run through your statement – just to be clear. It would help us a lot.’

‘Yeah,’ said Coyle, glancing back to the lifeboat. ‘Look, I thought it might help – we could go out, to the island?’ He smiled again, hands together, and Shaw thought he’d planned it like this so that they’d be out in his elements, the sea and air, not here, landlocked. ‘Shift’s done and I need to check the pots. Couple of the Burnham restaurants are screaming for fresh stuff. Crab, scallop. That OK? And I could do with catching the tide.’ Coyle’s manner was charming, smooth, and Shaw imagined he’d honed those skills flogging his shellfish to the Chelsea–on–Sea fishmongers and pubs along the coast. But the gentrification of the coast hadn’t all been good news, because while it provided Coyle with a living, he clearly couldn’t afford to live locally anymore. Having to drive back into the seedy suburbs of Lynn to a flat at the end of a long shift would make a bitter man of anyone. He wondered how much of Coyle’s cheery nature was manufactured – the shell on the crab.

‘The pots are on the Nor Bank, then we can swing back to East Hills.’

Coyle led them to an eighteen–foot clinker–built fishing boat moored at the foot of a short wooden wharf beside the lifeboat slipway. It was called
Ellie–May,
and registered at Wells.

They cut out to sea, Coyle expertly judging the angle of impact between the small boat and the modest swell. Half a mile out he cut the
Ellie–May
’s speed, expertly picking up a series of buoys and lifting the pots, putting crab and two lobsters into white plastic buckets, scallops into trays. Valentine found the plastic clicking of claws unnerving, turning his stomach, where he’d recently deposited a full English breakfast roll and a pint of tea.

Their arrival at East Hills was watched by a curious Sunday crowd on the beach. The scent of burning skin and suntan oil hung heavy in the air. Many of the faces, Shaw noted, were vaguely belligerent, as if they saw the
Ellie–May
’s as an intruder in a private paradise. Coyle snagged a wooden pile on the jetty with a rope and cut the engine, putting his feet up, and leaning his back on the tiller.

Shaw wondered why they hadn’t got out of the boat. Was he trying to make a subliminal point; that he never got out of the boat, because he was always the ferryman? It was a way of separating himself from the crime. ‘Just for the record,’ said Shaw, ‘can you talk us through that day from your point of view – the day of the murder? We’re just making sure that everything fits together. Routine.’

Coyle had the story pat: it matched the original brief statement. A full boat that day, but for a dozen seats. Tickets sold: seventy–five. Had they ever packed them in over the limit? asked Valentine. Never. They’d swapped a look at that, Shaw and Valentine, because both of them knew that none of the boats along the coast ever turned away the odd extra customer. So that was a little white lie. An indication, perhaps, that they weren’t guaranteed the unvarnished truth.

Coyle said he’d got out to East Hills at a few minutes past eleven, dropped everyone, then sailed along the coast to Morston to run out a charter to Blakeney Point to see the seals. He’d landed them back, then returned to East Hills to run everyone back at 5.30 p.m. As he edged the boat towards the floating dock that day he’d heard a woman screaming. She was at the water’s edge, her arms out rigid, her skin patterned with blood. She kept screaming, pointing into the water. Coyle had stood at the tiller, looking into the blue clear sea until he’d drifted into the blood–clouded waves. Then he’d seen the victim, face down, in trunks, tanned skin and straggly dyed hair.

They knew the rest.

Valentine thought about the little black market that kept seaside places like Wells alive: an economy built on favours, not cash. For the first time he had an idea, and he was angry with himself for not having it sooner. ‘Ever give a free ride to anyone – friends, family? You wouldn’t bother with tickets for them, would you?’

‘Everyone got a ticket,’ he said. ‘I start taking people for nothing I’d have a full boat in a week and nothing in the cash box. It’s fine running a barter system if you own the business. It wasn’t my boat. Not my place to give a free ride.’ He spat in the sea.