by Jim Kelly
‘Tom,’ he said.
Hadden broke off his work with the tripod and came over, using a metal pair of callipers to flip the picture over. It was Tilly Osbourne, a recent snap, taken in her garden, the bungalow behind. She was at the heart of this, thought Shaw, and therein lay the real mystery, because on that summer’s afternoon in 1994 when Shane White had died on East Hills she hadn’t even been born. He thought how often a trauma within a family – Marianne’s experience that day on East Hills – seemed to echo in the next generation. What was Tilly’s secret? Did she even know she had one?
‘Bag it,’ he said.
Once outside Shaw walked away from the spot, downhill, the trees thinning slightly, so that some weak sunshine cut down, like searchlights. He felt his limbs were heavy, each leg a weight to lift, and he was depressed by the knowledge that the killer had taken another victim. He felt a sense of imminent failure; knowing, at some subconscious level, that the answer to the mystery of the East Hills killer was before them now but they were too close to see it. ‘Wood for the trees,’ he said.
Behind him he heard a twig snap and Valentine joined him. They were in an open glade with a view down into the valley, the sea glimpsed between the hills, still scarfed in mist, the church tower at Morston just showing like a rock.
Valentine was on his mobile, trying to get through to the incident room. ‘What we going say at the presser? We won’t have an official ID on Coyle before then – we could play dumb, stick with him as prime suspect. What you reckon?’
Shaw didn’t answer. He was perfectly still, looking seawards. The fog was drifting, buckling, as it slipped past the single medieval tower of the distant church, like a slow motion replay of a wave crashing against a lighthouse.
‘Peter?’ asked Valentine, sensing the moment.
It was the mist on the coast that brought back the memory. Shaw would have been six – maybe seven. The last day of the summer holidays and his school uniform laid out on his bed. His father had come home early from St James’ and announced they were off to the beach. Shaw had felt contempt then for his father, who’d worked throughout the summer and had chosen this day for the beach – a fret, thick and cold, lay along the north Norfolk coast and had done for two days, bringing with it the smells of winter: damp pine needles under the trees and the salty tang of cooler water. But his father had just smiled, bundling beach things into a hamper, then dragging them all down to Wells quay in the car. The ferry out to East Hills had been cancelled that day. But there was a boat waiting for them, the engine running. Shaw had recognized the man at the tiller as one of his father’s shadowy band of ‘contacts’ – most of them criminals who swapped snippets of information for being left alone. This one was called Joyce, he remembered, and only had teeth on the left side of his mouth – and then only in the top of his jaw. He slapped young Shaw on the shoulder, pressing the muscle, as if assessing a calf at market.
The boat was called Myriam; Shaw remembered that detail too. Sitting in the damp boat, watching the cool grey water slip past, a little of his father’s obvious excitement had been contagious. Shaw had stared into the mist, wondering what would happen next. As they slipped past the lifeboat station the foghorn had sounded, making his mother jump, so perhaps she too had sensed that this was special. A day they’d recall a lifetime later.
Fifty yards further on and the world changed: they were free, wonderfully released from the grey gloom of the fret, and instead swamped by sunshine. The fret was only a hundred yards wide, beyond the beach the sun shone unfettered. The seascape seemed bathed in all the extra light the landscape had lost. Shaw remembered the sensational switch of colours, from sepia to blue and green, and then, half a mile ahead of them, the mustard-yellow sands of East Hills topped with its ridge of pine trees. And not a single human being in sight.
It had been his first trip to the island of East Hills. He’d been allowed to explore after they’d eaten a picnic. And running along the island’s single path, which clung to the ridge, he’d got to the northern point and made his great discovery. Nestling amongst the stone pines, almost lost in the encroaching sands, had stood the pillbox. Looking inside he’d let his eyes adapt to the dark so that he could see the remains of an old fire, a few bottles and some litter. He’d looked out through the gun slit to sea and felt the beginnings of a thousand daydreams, in which this secret place would provide the stage and the backdrop. But what he’d never imagined was that the place may have had a past of its own. That close to the pillbox the Stay Behind Army might have dug one of its secret dugouts. That it might still be there. And that it might be the answer to everything.
FORTY-ONE
Inside the sea fog the light levels were astonishingly low, as if dusk had fallen and night was gathering. And the temperature was cool, autumnal, with even a hint of ice. Valentine sat in the RNLI inshore boat with his back to the prow, watching the shadowy outline of the quayside at Wells recede behind Shaw’s shoulders. The DI had declined to explain the rationale behind their being in a boat heading for East Hills, and Valentine’s pride prevented him asking the same question twice. The Andora Star, the East Hills ferry, lay moored, all trips cancelled for the day. Beside them sat Ruth Robinson. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left The Circle. They’d found her alone, two coffee cups untouched on the table, her hand held in a fist. When Shaw had asked she’d unflexed the fingers and they’d seen what she held: a single cyanide pill.
‘He said I should take it,’ she’d said, sitting at the table, her voice dull with shock. ‘That it was for the best because he wouldn’t be coming back. He said you’d never find his body. Why was that important?’ She looked at Shaw, appearing to search his face for the answer. ‘He said that he’d done it all for me. All? I don’t dare think what he meant.’ She covered her mouth with both hands. ‘I won’t dare.’ She’d shaken her head, struggling to understand. ‘We said goodbye,’ she added, pushing the pill away. ‘I couldn’t take it.’ Shaw noticed the patina of tiny cracks in the seventy-year-old rubber casing of the pill. ‘I said I’d be here for Tilly, now Marianne’s gone, and I will be. I told Aidan that and it seemed to suck the life out of him. I’ve never seen him so . . .’ She searched for the word, her eyes filling with water. ‘Crushed.’ She brushed the tears from her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. ‘I can’t understand what’s happened to us; what’s happening to me.’
Since then, silence. But she hadn’t complained, following them to the Porsche and then sitting quietly as Shaw drove down to Wells. No questions, which told Shaw he was right. Using the hands-free he arranged for the RNLI’s inshore boat to be at the quay. And he’d summoned back-up – the police launch from Lynn, but they’d be an hour. The coastal forecast he’d picked up from Petersen on duty watch at the lifeboat house. The fret was thickening and ran out for nearly a mile, nearly to East Hills, but not quite.
When he said the words ‘East Hills’ on the mobile he looked in the rear-view mirror and watched her close her eyes. At the lifeboathouse they said that ‘Tug’ Coyle’s boat had gone from its buoy in The Cut. Petersen had heard an engine chugging past about two hours ago, just seen, off the point. ‘A small fishing boat, but not Coyle at the helm,’ he said.
‘We know,’ said Shaw, seeing again the body strapped to its chair, the heels bloody. Shaw looked ahead into the mist. On the port side he could see the first of the buoys leading out of the harbour: green, the size of a small car, rusted. He steered the boat a few degrees to starboard and let the engine pick up a few revs. A pain cut across his blind eye but it bled away as soon as he closed it, and he was relieved to feel that his heartbeat remained stable.
The second green buoy came into sight just as he lost contact with the grey outline of the pinewoods on shore. Now there was nothing but the buoy itself in the circular, colourless world which surrounded the boat. He cut the engine and started using the single paddle, switching from port to starboard expertly, guiding the boat ahead. The only chance he had, th
ought Shaw, was to approach the island silently. Visibility was about thirty yards but it seemed to lessen unpredictably, the mist suddenly closing around them. It was like a pulse – the mist thickening, then thinning, as if the fret was breathing.
The foghorn boomed.
Valentine had rooted out a flask in her kitchen before they left and made tea – dark, steeped with tannin. He poured some into the cap and offered it to her. When she took it her hand was steady, but she didn’t raise it to her lips, she just cradled it for warmth.
The foghorn boomed again and this time it seemed to release something within her, as if a lock had been picked. She looked about her for the first time and saw nothing but the circular grey horizon. ‘He never did tell me everything,’ she said, her voice a whisper, as if she were holding a conversation in her own head. ‘But I trusted him.’ She hauled in some air. ‘The night of the East Hills killing, the day of the murder,’ she added, as if it was an accusation, ‘I couldn’t find Aidan. He wasn’t up at the house, at The Circle. His Mum said Tug Coyle had phoned from a call box, and they were going out night fishing, and that Aidan was in town getting bait. That she wasn’t to worry. I was hurt. They did go fishing, the two of them, but I was only back for the summer and it was Saturday night, so it felt like he didn’t care. It was Mum who told me about East Hills because it was on the radio. She’d had a call from Lynn to say Marianne would be dropped home after she’d given a statement; they were all giving statements, so there was nothing to worry about. So we waited. She was in bits, really, hysterical, when the police dropped her at our house. Dad gave her a drink and I got her to bed. It was late – after eleven – and there was another call. It was Tug again – he didn’t say where he was, just that I was to meet Aidan the next evening at dusk on Holkham Beach. There was no need to worry or mention the call to anyone else, Tug said, but I should bring the first aid kit from the Lido.’
She’d been staring into the mist but now she glanced back to Shaw. ‘I did a course when I got the job – the summer before Durham. So Aidan knew I could do stitches.’
Ahead Shaw caught sight of the pines on East Hills, then lost them again in the fold of the mist.
‘Tug brought him ashore – they were in his fishing boat, not the ferry. Aidan looked dreadful – dirty, like he hadn’t slept. And pale – almost bloodless. We went into the woods and he took his shirt off and there was this knife wound – a few inches, clean but deep, and there’d been lots of blood. I said I wouldn’t do anything unless he told me what had happened. He said he couldn’t tell me.’
Valentine lit a match and the sound made her jump. Shaw noticed that the flame burnt upright, unmoved by the slightest wind. If he examined the silence he could just hear the whisper of the sea falling on unseen sands.
‘I put in the butterfly stitches, cleaned him up. Then I asked again. Told him I had a right to know. That did it – he just snapped. I didn’t expect it to happen – I thought I knew him so well. Looking back it was the pressure, the fear. But at the time it was so frightening. He had a knife in his belt – a knife I didn’t recognize – and he drew it and cut the air between us, back and forth, twice. His eyes . . .’ She had a look of horror on her face, as if she could see him there.
‘It was supposed to be a warning. But when I looked down my hand was half red below a razor-sharp wound, the blood dripping into the pine needles.’ She looked at her hands. ‘And when he looked down there was a spray of blood on his legs and feet.’ She peered into the mist: ‘I couldn’t stitch the wound with one hand. So he drove me to A&E.’ She dipped her hand in the sea, then lifted it out, letting droplets fall into the perfectly calm, oily, water. ‘Years later, he’d often take my hand and say sorry again. He said he was sorry that day too. When I came out of A&E he was there in the car. That was when he told me why he’d gone out to East Hills. The lifeguard, White, had taken pictures of Marianne with men and he was after money. Marianne had come to Aidan for a loan – £50.’ She laughed at the amount. ‘Of course, that would have just been the start of it. He’d have been back. Aidan gave her the money. He said he didn’t want to worry me about it, which I understood.’ She nodded to herself. ‘But I was hurt Marianne hadn’t come to me first. She was going to give White the cash that Saturday out on East Hills. Aidan’s always been very protective of Marianne, like a big brother. He wasn’t worried about the money but he thought White would want something else in payment – sex. So Aidan went out on the boat that day to have it out with him, to try and end it.
‘When Marianne walked off into the dunes he followed. White was waiting for her, but when Aidan arrived he was angry that she wasn’t alone. Aidan told White it was over – that he wanted the negatives and then he didn’t want to hear from him again. White just laughed in his face, pulled the knife.
‘Aidan didn’t plan to hurt him, let alone kill him. That’s what he always said and I believe him. There’s a cold streak in Aidan – I know that. Something died inside him when he had that accident. He lost a life then – a life he’d imagined was his to live. But he’s not a calculating man. Never that.
‘He said there was a lot of blood – that they’d both been wounded. The only thing he really remembered was the slipperiness of that boy’s skin, covered in blood. It had never bothered him until then, the sight of blood. But after that it was like a phobia. That’s why he always wrung the chickens by the neck.’ She looked over the grey water where a seal had broken the surface and was poised, scanning them.
They heard the dull percussion of a diesel turbine and the silhouette of a trawler slid by, fifty yards off the port side. The base note of vibration made a small bone buzz in Valentine’s ear. Another fishing boat went past, this time unseen, but the wake reached them and rocked them, the noise of oily water slapping unnaturally loud.
‘It wasn’t the truth, was it? Not all the truth?’ she asked. ‘Since Marianne died he hasn’t talked to me. Nothing. He won’t touch me.’ She looked from Valentine to Shaw, her face suddenly wet with tears. ‘I can feel the lies. I can imagine what it is – that he was in those pictures with Marianne. I’m not stupid. I heard the rumours when I came back from Durham: that she’d gone after what was mine. But I could live with it; I’ve always lived with it. What really frightened me, what’s frightening me now, is that there’s another lie worse than that lie. That there’s something else he didn’t tell me.’
She cupped her face, an almost theatrical gesture, as if she’d run out of ways to react to what was happening to her life. ‘I think he was there when Marianne died . . .’ She covered her mouth as if retrieving the words. ‘So I can see that might be the truth, but somehow even that doesn’t seem enough.’ She used the back of her hand to wipe her face, first left then right, then left again. ‘What I don’t understand is that he said he did it all for me.’
FORTY-TWO
Shaw had the sequence of the buoys leading out of Wells Harbour by rote. He’d been the pilot of the inshore RNLI hovercraft for nearly four years and he’d memorized most of the navigation along this stretch of the coast, from Lynn to Cromer. He knew that after the third green buoy on the port side he needed to look to starboard for the first red buoy, beyond which he should turn south-east to pick up the deep rip-tide channel which slipped past East Hills. So something had to be wrong because he was staring into the white mist, scanning a featureless seascape, when he saw two red buoys. Then three. Then none.
The blood drained to his heart so he blinked, trying to encourage the eye to water, his hands tightening on the paddle, which was poised in mid-air. He closed his eyes, the darkness full of strange cluster-bombs of blue light, then opened them to discover he had complete double-vision – everything in twos, one image slightly to the side of the other, slightly elevated. Nausea swept through him like a poison. The sharpness, the clarity, had gone, so that he was seeing a world with blurred edges, two worlds shadowing each other.
Valentine was looking at him. ‘Peter?’ he said. Ruth Robinson ju
st looked into the mist, her head awkwardly forward, tensed to hear, to catch the first whisper of waves falling on the island beach.
‘You navigate, I’ll paddle,’ said Shaw, his voice strained, his eyes closed. Reason told him that if he robbed his brain of the evidence his eye was failing then it would stop flooding his bloodstream with adrenaline. Sweat, beaded on his forehead, fell into his blind eye. He put the paddle down then held his hands together, the fingers braided. Valentine was shocked by the thought that he might have done that to stop them shaking.
‘Peter?’
‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Just do what I say.’ He picked up the paddle and dipped the blade expertly into the water, the sound as delicate as a trout taking the bait. He could do it blindfold, so he kept his eyes closed, feeling the boat slip forward in response to each stroke. ‘Over your right shoulder there should be a red buoy,’ he said.
‘Not a thing,’ said Valentine.
‘Right. We’ve drifted a bit. It’s OK. Look around.’ Shaw’s voice was light now, controlled, and it made him feel better to hear it.
Valentine turned and the shift of weight rocked the boat.
Shaw kept his voice matter-of-fact. ‘Just move your head.’
Valentine tried that but the vertebra in his neck cracked as he swung his bony, axe-like, skull from left and right. ‘There, I see it,’ he said. ‘It’s to our right – three o’clock.’
‘Take us past it – leave it on our right. Then look out for another, ahead, and do the same with that.’
Shaw felt the change approaching before his skin felt the sun. The temperature rose, the damp, almost sulphurous smell of the mist dissolved, but most of all the acoustic world came back in sharp definition, as if the ‘treble’ had suddenly been switched up on a gigantic sound system. A gull shrieked, the branches on the stone pines whispered, and he opened his eyes to see East Hills bathed in sunshine, the image pin-sharp.
