Death's Door (26 page)

He sipped the coffee and left some space for Valentine to say something. Valentine said nothing, and felt no need to, but he did think that if silence was O’Hare’s tactic he was on a loser, because he could do that all day.

O’Hare despatched the coffee then crossed his legs so that Valentine looked away, uncomfortable with the sudden sight of bare legs, but pleased to note they were oddly hairless and pale.

‘I understand there’s been developments,’ said O’Hare. ‘Out at Creake – another body?’

Valentine was going to answer then but O’Hare had hit his stride.

‘You any good at reading between the lines, George?’

‘I try.’ However hard he forced his voice towards neutral Valentine knew he was broadcasting antagonism, even belligerence.

‘Great. Listen then – and consider.’

O’Hare looked over his shoulder and the girl who’d brought him coffee took the hint. They heard the rattle and hiss of the Italian coffee machine being fired up. ‘I am not impressed with the leadership in this case. Especially at the top. I expect my DIs to deliver. I’m not talking out of shop – Shaw knows what I think. I doubt that this latest development makes the case any less . . .’ he searched for the word, ‘lucid. So, it may well be that traffic, or possibly family liaison, will be getting a DI transfer from the Serious Crime Unit. Which means I’ll be looking for a new DI. I’ve examined your file; it’s been an impressive couple of years. You’d clearly be in line if the vacancy arose. But you knew all that.’

It wasn’t a question so Valentine didn’t answer it. He felt himself sliding out of his depth. He imagined that O’Hare’s career had been littered with moments like this: subtle, clandestine, political. Valentine felt like he was being abused, soiled even, which was ironic given he was sitting in the cleanest place he’d be in all day.

‘The next time you’re up in front of a panel is when? October? So we may have to accelerate that process, but you can leave that to me. In the meantime . . .’ He rearranged his robe, re-belting it, getting ready to move on. ‘I’m not happy – even in the short term – with one of my key DIs being disabled. I realize you do everything you can to shield Shaw from the consequences of his unfortunate accident but the fact is he’s on the front line. If nothing else it hardly enhances the brand image of the West Norfolk, does it? I think the least we can do is assure the general public we have able-bodied detectives.’

Valentine was too shocked to speak. Later, he told himself that otherwise he would have done. ‘So, any problems he has in the course of his duties due to his disability, I’d like you to keep a record. Report back. Needless to say you’d be doing him a favour. A disability pension under present arrangements is quite generous. And there’s a safety issue. He’s not been properly evaluated by our people in terms of driving. Swanning round in a Porsche hardly helps.’

‘It’s safer,’ said Valentine. ‘Narrow “A” bars.’

‘Whatever,’ said O’Hare standing. ‘It’s your choice, George. We’re having this conversation here because I wanted to keep everything in the family, as it were. Strictly off the record. But I thought you should have the full picture. This way is best for everyone.’ He tried out a smile, then just turned and left.

Valentine sat alone for five minutes. He was cold, and felt just like he’d felt the first time he’d given blood, as if his life – or any capacity for independent action – had been siphoned from his body.

Out on the waterfront he walked down to the Boal Quay, where some of the fishing boats were in, and smoked, looking at the boxes of silver fish catching the sunlight. He felt the need to talk to someone. Usually this came upon him after dark, and he’d stroll along to All Saints and sit opposite Julie’s gravestone. But the sun, up now, and already hot, made that impossible, although he had no idea why.

Instead, he thought of Jan Clay at Wells, looking out to sea, a hand shielding her eyes from the glare.

TWENTY-SIX

A
s Shaw drove, his good eye on the narrow coastal road, Valentine told him everything he’d managed to learn about the Auxunits, the so-called
Stay Behind Army
, and the standard issue of six cyanide pills. Shaw had picked Valentine up outside St James’ at eight fifteen, as arranged, but had got the distinct impression Valentine had been there some time. He’d been sitting on the semicircular stone steps, his shadow stretching down to the street, a little heap of spent Silk Cut between his feet.

‘And we’re saying these units actually existed, George – they’re not just some Whitehall boffin’s dream?’ asked Shaw, pointing the Porsche East through the docks. Given the state of the inquiry: stalled while they waited for Joe Osbourne’s DNA check, baffled by Paul Holtby’s brutal murder, and with just two days to the chief constable’s press conference, they’d agreed that they could hardly ignore the outside possibility they could track the dugout down.

‘I called the MoD last night, told ’em to send us what they could on these units by email,’ said Valentine. ‘But yeah, they’re for real. Well, they were for real. This coast was heavily fortified – you saw those bronze rails up in the woods above The Circle, by the folly? They’re gun rails, and there’s loads more. Coastal defence. They thought that if the Germans are coming, they’ll come this way. Long, flat, desolate coast, with the road open to the capital. It was our Normandy, waiting to happen.’

Valentine’s normal listless tone had gone and for the first time Shaw thought that for his DS the Second World War wasn’t just a distant memory. For his generation, and Shaw’s father, it was a backdrop to their lives, because their parents had lived through it. Perhaps that was why he seemed more energized by the discovery than Shaw.

‘And who, exactly, is it that says there was one of these units at Creak?’ Shaw asked, trying to think straight, while the road took a vicious double-hairpin bend at Burnham Overy Staithe, sneaking past The Hero – a pub in Chelsea-set blue, with a signboard showing Nelson.

‘Nobody – not officially,’ admitted Valentine. ‘It was popular wartime gossip. They had engineers up there but they were probably building the gun emplacement by the folly. They’d do that, because it makes sense.’ He turned half in the seat to look at Shaw’s profile: ‘They’d put the dugout near something else military so they could cover their steps. There’s no point a platoon of sappers turning up to build a
secret
underground base, is there?’ He stopped, dragging air into his lungs, disguising the breath. ‘This way, if anyone was seen approaching the spot people would think they were going to the gun, or the pillbox, or the lookout, or whatever it was they’d built
above
ground, nearby. The rumour was strong enough that when English Heritage took over at the Warrenner’s Lodge a few years ago they did do a survey as part of a maintenance programme. They found fuck all, except a shadow of a brick warren, most of it plugged with clay.’

‘Names – do we know who’s in these units?’

‘Local volunteers and they all signed the Official Secrets Act – and they were paid. But the documentation was all-central, and all of it was destroyed in ’46. A few people broke cover in the eighties and nineties – MoD bloke said they had some cuttings. But basically they kept quiet – it’s like Bletchley Park. They took it seriously; a secret’s a secret. They chose people who could keep a secret. So names are going to be tough.’

Shaw nodded, letting him talk on. He’d never heard Valentine say so much.

‘But we know what the Auxunits were like – the people who ran the network were commandos; they wanted people who knew the local terrain and who could survive on the run: gamekeepers, farmers, field workers. You had to be fit too – so that means they looked at the emergency services. Most were reserved occupations, so there were young men about – police, fire brigade, coastguard. And anyone who could use a gun, so they recruited at shoots, hunts, clubs.’

‘And every one of these units got six of these cyanide pills?’ asked Shaw.

‘Yeah, MoD guy said that was standard practice for anyone working behind enemy lines, which is where they would have been if the invasion had rolled over them. Kind of insurance policy. If you thought you were gonna get caught, and tortured, at least there was a quick way out. That was in everyone’s interests.’

They swung past the end of The Row, the terrace street on which Arthur Patch had lived for nearly half a century. A thin line of smoke still rose from the ruin of the house, and the rest of the street still looked empty. The Porsche climbed the steep hill beyond the village until the Docking Hill wind farm filled the horizon, the vanes of the three giant mills turning lazily. Shaw put the Porsche up on the verge.

They could see the usual group of demonstrators by the gates, where they’d set up a vigil – a circle of candles – for Paul Holtby. Killing the engine Shaw heard a thin dirge on the air being sung by the crowd. Catching sight of the candle flames he thought of Holtby’s skin-white face, smoke pumping out of the ash, and Hadden’s chilling description:
human candle.

TWENTY-SEVEN

D
C Lau walked towards the Porche from the direction of the wind farm’s gatehouse. Leather trousers, leather jacket, open to reveal a crisp white collarless shirt. Wrap-around reflective sunglasses hid her eyes. Shaw thought the effect was designed to radiate brisk, sexless, efficiency but the walk was strangely sinuous, almost a cat walk.

Shaw threw the door open and put a booted foot up on the dashboard.

Lau nodded a greeting, taking the time to squat down so that she could catch Valentine’s eye as well. ‘We’ve got statements,’ she said, her voice free of any hint of her Chinese descent. ‘But they’re pretty much the awkward squad. Talk about blood out of a stone. They seem to think Holtby’s been murdered by a worldwide conspiracy – US corporates bankrolling the wind farm, CIA, us. Paranoid stuff. We’ve spoken to Holtby’s aunt at Morston. She’s pretty sure he’d have been at Morston on the beach in 1994. You know, that’s a guess given it was eighteen years ago. But odds on he was there. A big family, they didn’t go anywhere else, just let the kids run wild.’ She smiled. ‘Sounds great.’

‘Biog?’ asked Shaw.

Lau painted the picture they’d put together of Holtby: local rich kid, absentee parents in the City, a degree from York University in history, student activism, then the eco-warrior circuit. Justina had emailed a preliminary autopsy report from The Ark. The scenario was provisional, but clear. The trap had brought Holtby down, a cyanide pill had been administered while he was alive – the casing was in his lower gullet – then the body had been abandoned to the approaching overnight fire. Something in the rucksack had accelerated the heat next to the body – so far they’d found chemical traces of phosphorous. ‘Tom thinks it might be a flare – you know, like an Olympic torch or something,’ she added, shrugging.

‘OK,’ said Shaw, kicking open the door. ‘Suggests he was up there after dark – or expecting to be up there after dark. Any idea why?’

Lau slipped on reflective sunglasses. ‘They’re all playing dumb on that, but I think they know. The Osbourne girl might talk. She said she wanted to see you, sir. Alone.’

Tilly Osbourne stood away from the group, by the security fence of the wind farm, watching the nearest turbine, the sixty-foot blades slicing through the air like the sharpest of knives. She had her fingers meshed through the wire, her face pressed against the latticework.

As Shaw approached on the tufted downland grass she turned her head. The tears were drying on her face, which was puffy, with the surface tension of a week-old party balloon. ‘How’s your Dad?’ he asked.

‘Ill. It’s the stress. He doesn’t really deal with emotions – not properly. But he’s comfortable, the drugs are working, he’ll be home soon.’ It seemed to be the thought of home that made her eyes fill with tears, so that she looked away. ‘It’s a man thing, right? Not talking.’

She straightened her back and looked up into the sky, an oddly adult mannerism for a teenager. ‘Once you get used to secrets – collecting them – it’s addictive.’

Shaw wondered who she was talking about: her dead mother, her father, or herself?

She stared through the wire at one of the turbines marked by a six-foot-high letter B in black stencil on the silver, elegant, tower of steel.

‘Paul’s death. It’s linked to Mum, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It has to be. But I don’t understand why.’

‘Why linked?’

She shrugged and almost smiled and Shaw caught the ghost of a resemblance to her mother, or at least to the woman he’d seen smiling for the photographer in the Fleet Street studio. ‘I’m eighteen years old – I’ve lived here all my life, in the village. Once, when I was little, there was a car crash by the pub and someone died. But that’s it – eighteen years, one death, an accident. Now three in a few days. Mum, Paul and that old bloke up on The Row. You don’t think Mum’s death was an accident, do you? I don’t know why, but you think someone else was there. At the end. And there’s still people on The Row – people in white suits. So something’s going on.’ She smiled. ‘There’s not much to do up here but talk. We do conspiracy theories by the dozen.’

She watched the blade turning. ‘If I tell you what I know about Paul, will it help?’

‘Of course.’

‘It wasn’t Dad – at the end, with Mum,’ she said. ‘I know that. We talked, last night, at the hospital.’ She pressed her fingers on either side of the bridge of her nose. ‘And it wasn’t Dad out at East Hills. I’d know.’

‘OK. If he’s telling the truth we’ll know soon because we’re checking his DNA, so there’s nothing to worry about.’ Shaw waited a beat: ‘If he’s telling the truth, which means we still need to know who it was, Tilly. Who killed that lifeguard and who was with your Mum. Who brought her that pill, who helped her take it – and in the end
made
her take it.’

Shaw gave her a brief summary of the autopsy findings on her mother.

Shocked, she released her fist from the wire, like a plant opening in time-lapse photography, and showed him that in one of her palms she held a key. In the sunlight it was almost too bright, as if it was emitting energy, not reflecting it. Then she told him what they’d planned. ‘It was so exciting,’ she said, and the smile flared again.