by Jim Kelly
THIRTY-FOUR
Wednesday
Wells’ lifeboat station was at the end of a straight mile of sea wall which led directly out to sea from the town quay. The beach stretched beyond, a vast yellow undulating plain, an early morning August crowd of several hundred reduced to isolated dots. Lifeboat crewman Tug Coyle was still missing. Peterborough CID had contacted his wife who said she had received her monthly support payment from Tug’s solicitor, but there had been no call from her ex-husband, which was rare. The coming Thursday was his regular monthly date with his son. Usually he’d call to fix up time and place: often the town cinema, or the stock-car racing arena, or a fishing trip in summer. Coyle’s car – a battered Vauxhall van – was not outside his flat or beside the lifeboat station.
Shaw put the Porsche in an empty slot marked for RNLI crewman. As soon as he swung open the door he could smell the salt, hear the distinctive shouts of children playing out at the water’s edge. The heat was already building, yesterday’s thunderstorm a distant memory. The air over the modern corrugated iron roof of the lifeboat house buckled in the sun’s rays, an anchored mirage. From the outside the building had all the charm of an MFI out-of-town showroom, painted in corporate shades of grey and orange. But inside the Aran-class boat gleamed. Half a dozen tourists were already up on the walkway which gave a view inside the boat’s hi-tech cabin.
Valentine arrived and spread some A4 sheets on to the flat glass top of a display cabinet containing medals. Ignoring a sign he lit a Silk Cut. They’d talked this through the night before after coffee. If Shaw was right about the killer’s motives then there was a genetic link between the murderer and both the teenage burglar and one of the thirty-seven demonstrators the inquiry team had interviewed who would have been up at Docking Hill on the day of the planned wind farm protest. The sure-fire way to catch their killer was to put the thirty-eight DNA profiles on the database and wait for the link to appear. But that would take several days. And they didn’t have several days. So they’d try to do it on paper, by interview. They were dealing with close family relationships: near family, so it wasn’t an impossible task – it just needed some painstaking work.
‘So far?’ asked Shaw.
‘So far nothing,’ said Valentine, sifting the papers. ‘But Paul seems to know what he’s doing. The whole team’s on it flat out. He says it’ll take twenty-four hours – maybe more. But we’ve set up a fast track too, seeing if we can find a link between our Garry Tyler – the burglar – and Joe Osbourne.’
He held up a head-and-shoulders print of a teenager: cropped hair, belligerent stare. ‘This is Tyler by the way, care of Wells’ nick. Jackie Lau’s going out to see the kid’s mother over lunch. That’s our best bet. Paul talked to Tilly Osbourne and she says she can’t recall any Tyler’s in the family, but hey, they’re not that kind of family and she’s a teenager. Why would she care?’
They climbed a short spiral metal staircase into the mess room. News of a crewman missing had brought several lifeboatmen into the station. Shaw recognized most of the faces. No one had seen Tug Coyle for forty-eight hours. He had been due on a standard watch that morning at six but hadn’t reported in, having missed two shifts the day before, one the day before that. There’d be a disciplinary hearing; if there wasn’t a copper-plated excuse, he might be thrown off the crew.
They asked to see Coyle’s locker and one of the senior crew opened it up: spare boots, gear for the lifeboat, roll-up tin, torch, two heavy RNLI sweaters, two pairs of camouflaged trousers, and a programme for the Norfolk Arena, featuring rally cross and speedway. Valentine took the key, relocked the locker, and asked them to leave it that way.
The deputy coxswain was a man called Petersen, Navy-clean, with eyes that looked as if the sun had bleached the colour out of them. He showed Shaw Coyle’s rota: eight six-hour shifts a week, plus any back-up shifts he could make. Available on call 24/7 except for an eight-hour gap on Thursday afternoons when he took his son out.
‘Broken marriage,’ said Petersen, shrugging.
When asked he said that Coyle was popular but not particularly sociable. They went back downstairs to the boathouse and Petersen nodded at the portrait on the wall of Tug John’s. ‘You know he was his grandson? Difficult act to follow. Didn’t help giving the kid the nickname, did it? Like he was supposed to be right there in the old man’s footsteps. I knew Johns, and frankly I thought he was pretty unpleasant. Kind of skipper in the Navy you’d go a long way to avoid. Bit of a tyrant. You couldn’t tell him anything. If you’ve done it, he’s done it, only he’s done it better. Coyle was better than that. But, you know, if we could see ourselves . . .’
The doors of the boathouse were open so they were looking down the ramp at The Cut, the tide flowing out and a yacht sliding past, East Hills on the horizon.
‘There is one thing,’ added Petersen. ‘One of the crew comes from a family in the town that owns one of the huts – way out the end. Tug used to sleep over some nights rather than driving back to Lynn. Illegal, but like nobody’s counting, and there’s plenty that can’t afford the local house prices anymore. Give me a sec I’ll get you the key.’
They stood together out on the sand, not far from a family encamped round a hole full of children. Both their mobile’s buzzed with an identical incoming text. It was Paul Twine up at the incident room: CSI had phoned from The Ark, the lab result on Joe Osbourne’s DNA had arrived. Negative – no match with Sample X. They’d sent a uniformed officer up to the hospital to give Osbourne the good news in person.
‘Negative!’ Valentine held his phone at arm’s length and thought about lobbing it into the sea.
‘How does that work?’ He spat in the sand. ‘Coyle, the ferryman, does a runner, but it’s not Joe Osbourne out on East Hills. So who the fuck was out on the island?’ He looked skywards and his neck cracked. ‘Are we back to Grieve and Roundhay?’ His voice had risen with frustration: ‘And if we’re back to them why the fuck has Coyle pissed off?’
Shaw just stood in the sand, rooted, feet in his own shadow, like he wasn’t going anywhere.
THIRTY-FIVE
To the east the long, graceful curve of the beach huts bled into a shimmering horizon of blue. Shaw and Valentine walked for half a mile but didn’t seem to get any closer to the end. Most of the huts were open. The families in them fell into three groups. The Chelsea-on-Sea set: cooler boxes, literary novels and not to many kids. Then the families from the big camp site and holiday park beyond the pine woods who got a hut as part of their package deal: extended families, noisier, kids playing games, kettles whistling. And then just a few local families. They’d be wrapped up against the sun, dogs about, and perhaps some fishing gear set up to catch the tide as it came in.
Shaw had been walking while looking out to sea so that when the sudden clap of thunder came it was a shock. He spun round, to the land and trees, and saw the black edge of a storm cloud over the pines. As he tried to measure the speed of the cloud, lightning flashed: someone screamed in one of the nearby huts, and then the first fat raindrops fell. He looked back at Valentine, a hundred yards adrift, standing in his raincoat looking up at the charcoal-grey lid of cloud as it slid over the beach. The rain started to crater the sand.
Shaw broke into a jog. Halfway along the line of huts he got to one of the wooden stairways which led back over the dunes into the pinewoods. Beside the bottom step stop a standpipe, dripping into the sand. The next hut, No. 124, Shaw had once hired himself, a favourite spot for Lena and Fran. He stopped, recalling that it was about here on the beach that he usually lost his mobile signal. He checked: the usual six bars had been reduced to one, flickering. Within seconds the rain was an impenetrable screen, like a shower curtain, hiding the woods and then, by degrees, the sea. He waited for Valentine and then they trudged on, the beach crowds going in the opposite direction. No. 186 was indeed almost the last in the line, citrus lemon in colour, one of the older huts, so its stilts were shorter, the top step only just above the
encroaching sand.
Over the door a brass nameplate read: North View.
Petersen hadn’t given them a key in the end, but a piece of paper with a three-digit code to punch into a small box mounted on the hut. Inside was a key.
Valentine struggled briefly with a salt-rusted padlock, rain dripping from his nose. The first thing they saw when they got the door open was a sleeping bag on the floor. Military issue, good enough for Arctic camping, and set out neatly on a thermal mat. Shaw picked up a pair of discarded trousers – again, combat green.
‘Likes his military kit,’ said Shaw.
It was one of those moments when they were both thinking the same thing. Was Coyle the man Aidan Robinson had spotted on the edge of the woods above Marianne Osbourne's house in the days before she died? But they both knew that didn’t work: Robinson and Coyle were family. If he could spot an army jumper and a military short back-and-sides, he could recognize his own cousin from a hundred yards.
‘It’s cheap. Army Surplus,’ said Valentine. ‘Doubt if it’s a fashion statement.’
There was a locked shutter as well, so Shaw undid it, swinging it down to reveal a window which he unlatched, so that light flooded the interior. Looking seawards he could see a small fishing boat off the beach, a lone sailor bailing water in a kind of unhurried way. Inside the hut were two thermos flasks – again, heavy-duty issue. A cardboard box with Lipton’s on the side contained apples, a sliced loaf, cheese and a bunch of salad onions. There was a newspaper – the Daily Mail – and a thriller, Clive Cussler, and a battery powered camping lantern. The storm cloud was out to sea now, a few miles off shore, and the sun was coming back, brighter than before, but cooler.
‘Coyle won’t get far,’ said Valentine. ‘They never do unless they’ve got a fortune. Disappearing is an expensive business.’
But Shaw didn’t think that was always true. This was a man who could survive on his own. A man who might turn out to be more like his granddad – Tug Johns – than anybody had ever thought.
Shaw leant out of the window and lifted the shutter, sliding in the locks, and was about to close the door when he glanced up above the lintel. There were two snapshots there, which he took down. One was black and white. Two kids in a boat, a man with white hair posed for the picture. ‘Tug Johns and his grandsons,’ said Shaw. ‘Maybe? It’s certainly the grandfather . . .’ He looked at the youngsters and was pretty sure the smaller one was Tug Coyle. You could see the man he was going to be – the crablike carapace of shoulders and back, the short powerful build. It was harder to see Aidan Robinson in the other boy – the strange, steel-grey eyes were the same, but the face was much narrower, even feminine, with high cheekbones. Of the belligerent confidence, the stillness, there was no trace.
The other snap was in colour. A teenage boy, posing in front of a smashed-up stock car. Valentine retrieved the picture of Garry Tyler from his raincoat pocket. They had a match: hundred per cent, no doubt.
Valentine snapped the ID picture. ‘Tyler. It’ll be Tug’s ex-wife’s maiden name. It’s the same kid. It’s Coyle’s son.’
THIRTY-SIX
They sat on the steps of North View together, looking out to sea, Valentine holding the picture of Garry Tyler. If Tug Coyle, the ferryman, was his father, then it suggested he was also their killer. But how could he be? He’d brought the Andora Star into East Hills through seawater stained with the victim’s blood. He couldn’t have been in two places at once: on the beach with the murder weapon and in the boat, alone at the helm.
Shaw closed his eyes to rest the muscles, and it was then – robbed of the distraction of sight – that he heard the silence. The sounds of the beach had gone entirely, not just the gentle whisper of the holiday crowd but even the rustling of the pinewoods. He stood to see if a fresh storm cloud was edging over but instead found that about a hundred yards away, along the beach, an almost solid wall of mist was advancing east, drifting along the coast.
‘Fret,’ he said, using the local word.
They were common in summer, especially after storms, when icy rain fell on a warm sea. A fog bank, formed at the margin of sea and land, would condense in a few minutes then hug the coast. Soon they’d be within it and the thought made Shaw shiver because it would be cold in there, and damp, and the rest of the world would recede even further. If silence could have a physical form then this was it.
Shaw closed his eyes and waited for the moment. First he smelt the mist – that acrid, bitter edge to the salty air, and then he felt it, a bristling moisture on his skin. Opening his eyes he found he was enclosed in the whiteness: he could see Valentine and the hut, but nothing else. But almost immediately the fog parted to reveal a view of the sea: a wedge of blue, sun-splashed. There was a boat out there, the one he’d seen earlier, but the sailor on board was motionless now, his hand on a line. The boat, thought Shaw, was in exactly the same spot. ‘That’s it,’ said Shaw. He stood, pointing out to sea. ‘Coyle said he stood off East Hills that day for what – twenty minutes? Well, he wouldn’t have let the boat drift – he’d have put down an anchor. Just like that guy. We thought someone might have swum off the boat, or out to the boat, but maybe it was just Coyle. He could have swum ashore, killed White in the water, and swum back. The boat would still be there. Then ten minutes later he brings the ferry in as the body of his victim drifts along the beach.’
‘Motive?’ asked Valentine, trying to light a Silk Cut with damp fingers.
‘Maybe he’d been caught on film with Marianne Osbourne,’ suggested Shaw. ‘Or – this is better – she’d gone to him for help because White was blackmailing her? Don’t forget he was Aidan’s cousin – she must have known him. And he runs the ferry. So she asks for help and he makes a plan. They know White will be out there. He swims ashore like I said from the Andora Star – a hundred yards, maybe less. White’s not in the water, he’s up in the dunes, lured there by Marianne. He kills White, with maybe Marianne a witness or accomplice. So it’s his DNA on the towel. He’s Sample X.
Then we resurrect the case and send out letters telling everyone we’re going to test all the men taken off East Hills that day. He knows we won’t find a match. Does he think we’ll work out it’s him? Or does he think Marianne will buckle in the interview? She’s rocky, unstable. She thinks she can’t do it, so they talk at the house.
‘The last time he visits – the day before the mass screening – he takes the cyanide pill with him. Where’d he get it? My guess is Tug Johns, his grandfather. Or at least it was in the old man’s stuff – something left in the attic, or maybe one of the dugouts did survive. Old Tug Coyle was a shoe-in for one of these secret units. He’s got all the skills plus leadership. So young Tug brings the pill. It’s a gift for Marianne: a one-way ticket out of a life she can’t face anymore. And he helps her take it. Maybe even makes her take it. Meanwhile there’s a family crisis. His son is hauled in for the identity parade at Wells. Tug knows it’s him. He knows we’ll arrest the kid. The first thing we’ll do is take a DNA swab for the database. And in one step that will take us to Tug Coyle. In this case the match is all we need, George. It’s not like Tug Coyle can claim the forensic evidence is down to an accidental meeting on the beach. He was never on the beach – that’s his story, has been his story for eighteen years. This would prove he lied, and the only verdict a jury would bring in would be guilty. So Arthur Patch has to die to keep young Garry Tyler out of trouble.’ Shaw stood and walked forward in the wet sand, crunching razor shells on the high water mark.
‘And Holtby?’ asked Valentine.
‘There’s a DNA link, there has to be, we just need to find it.’
‘There’s a simpler answer,’ said Valentine. He didn’t really believe in conspiracy, grand theories of crime. He thought criminals were a lower order: not exactly stupid, just subnormal, without the wit to see the outcome of their own actions. So anything that smacked of accident, or cock-up, sounded right to him. ‘It doesn’t have to be DNA, Peter. What if Coyle
got the pills from the dugout, and it is up in the pinewoods above The Circle? Maybe Holtby stumbled on something up there, something he couldn’t ignore. It could have got him killed.’
Shaw looked out over the sands, noting how the rain had rubbed them clean of footprints, leaving just a stippled, virgin pattern. ‘We need to up the search for Coyle,’ he said. ‘East of England constabularies, plus a radio and TV alert. And contact UK Border Agency, make sure they’ve got his details online in case he tries to catch a flight out, or skip on a ferry.
‘Or a boat?’ suggested Valentine. ‘A small boat along the coast?’
Out at sea they heard a ship’s foghorn through the mist, answering the one on shore. It was three hundred miles to the nearest continental port. In a small boat Coyle had no chance. Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
‘He’d have to be desperate,’ said Shaw.
They locked up and began to walk back, joining the crowd which was still trickling off the beach, children grumbling, parents hauling gear. Shaw had reached the hut he’d hired with the family, where the signal picked up, when his mobile vibrated in his pocket. It was a prompt call from his message box, so he retrieved the text. It was from the chief constable’s secretary asking Shaw to call about the story which had appeared in that morning’s edition of The Daily Telegraph concerning East Hills: did he know the source?
He was trying to think of a good answer when a single fresh text arrived from Twine. HUNSTANTON CLIFF CAR PARK. ASAP. INCIDENT.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The coastal band of mist had thickened, the fret edging inland half a mile, the fog deepening from cotton-wool white to a darker hue – a hint of purple at its heart, and even a thread of amber seeping through from the hidden sun. The main car park at Hunstanton, a wide ten acre field on the cliff top, appeared almost empty as Shaw steered the Porsche through the entrance gate and let gravity trundle the car, in neutral, down the tilted grass. They passed a pair of VW camper vans in the gloom, then three sports cars with sailboards strapped to roof racks, then nothing – just damp grass. Shaw was always amazed at the speed with which a summer beach crowd could desert the seaside once the sun was gone. The pier back in town would be crowded, as would the pubs and chip shops. There’d be a queue for the cinema’s matinee performance of the latest Narnia blockbuster. But up here, on the cliff top, you could throw a Frisbee and bet your mortgage it wouldn’t hit a thing except wet grass.
