He had said, ‘Don’t go, then. Come back,’ and she had looked up at him for a long time, not smiling.
Smith, too, had had communications this Saturday morning. There was a letter from Belfast. Leah Wisbey, Catriona’s sister, had been as good as her word. In return for his leaving quietly after they had found Brann’s remains, for saying nothing to Diarmuid, the young man whom Smith had discovered was his son, she had since sent him letters about the family there – this was the third and by far the most interesting.
‘There’s to be a wedding,’ she had written, ‘and not before time. They’ll need to be quick or the reason for it will be plain for all the world to see. I was going to write that that’s the state of things today, but then I thought of you and his mother. That’s the way he came into the world and it’s been none the worse for it. Anyway, you’re to be a grandfather.’ She would send him more news, and pictures of the wedding and all…
Avalanches can begin with the movement of a single stone, and now it seemed to Smith that he had somehow begun an avalanche of change in his life. Retirement was one thing, and the fact that his relationship with Jo had suddenly moved on in a telephone conversation was unexpected, but to be a grandfather, a grandad, in a matter of months by the sound of it? And Cati a grandmother, a granny! She would love that, though. Leah’s letters had said that her sister was still holding on, weaker sometimes but still holding on and now she would have something to hold on to more tightly than ever.
His thoughts were almost a whirl for five minutes. He went to the picture in the lounge, the one that Leah had taken of the three of them on the emerald hillside under the azure sky where, a few minutes later, they would find the long-buried body of Brann. Soon there would be another generation. He tried to picture that in the photograph, one of them holding the new-born son or daughter. Two of them, of course, would do so, soon, but the third never would, and the pain of that caught him unawares. He put the picture down and returned to the kitchen to read the rest of Leah’s letter.
When he bought the Macbook Pro four months ago, Waters had felt a little guilty – the idea had been in the back of his mind that the money ought rather to go towards a deposit. He had never suggested that he and Katherine should buy somewhere together, not directly anyway, but even so… And now? Now he was a free man again – he had decided to end it at their next encounter, face to face - a free man with a very good laptop.
To himself, as it loaded up, but also aloud, and in a very passable imitation of his sergeant, he said, ‘Dear me. How tragic. Nothing better to do on a weekend than some unpaid overtime.’ And then he typed in the name “Julie Shapiro”, and pressed enter.
Not really overtime, though. Smith had said on a couple of occasions that he, Waters should find out more about the owner of The Queens Arms, but it had probably been more to aid the young detective’s cultural education than to further the investigation. Mark Williams might be holding back something about Bernard Sokoloff, but his aunt, Ms Shapiro, plainly lived in a world of her own, a world that had little to do with the one inhabited by the rest of us.
He began with the Wikipedia page. There was another photograph, quite unlike the once-famous image on the record sleeve; in this one she was in the photographer’s studio by the look of it, wearing a flowery summer dress, half-smiling into the lens. She seemed younger and naive, more vulnerable, though with her relatively short career, all the publicity pictures of her must have been taken within a period of eighteen months to two years. Waters opened a notes panel on the laptop but didn’t seriously intend to make any, reminding himself that this wasn’t work – it was idle curiosity as a result of having nothing better to do on a Saturday morning.
“This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous or harmful.” Waters wondered whether Julie Shapiro had ever read this page about herself; she must have done so, famous people must Google themselves sometimes. And there had been a laptop and associated hardware on the desk through in the next room of her apartment; she had not cut herself off from the world, just most of the people presently in it.
He wondered after that whether she ever found any of it contentious, potentially libellous or harmful – all of those were subjective terms of the sort that keeps lawyers busy and highly paid for months and years on end. From the little he did know, the girl had burst onto the pop scene, become a huge sensation overnight, promised great things and then almost as quickly she had faded away. Saying that she had simply lacked the talent needed to survive very long in a heartless business might be viewed as potentially libellous; what exactly did the web-page have to say about the matter, then? Waters clicked on ‘Early career’ and began to read.
The rest of Leah’s letter was less exciting, and a good thing, too – he could only take so much earth-shattering news in one day. The boy’s software business was doing well, very well, new premises and the like – “as well it needs to be”, she had written, in the very same tone with which she had addressed Stuart Reilly during most of his stay in Belfast, “because his penny buns will cost him threepence now!” But Smith knew that she would be as thrilled as any of them at the news, and that the future great nephew or niece could have no better defender in all the province.
He folded the letter and put it away with the others in the drawer of the bureau that he and Sheila had shared. What would she have said about all this, if the boy had come to find him while she was alive? What would she have said about his decision to retire, and about Jo Evison? His life was moving on inexorably, and changing, but he didn’t want Sheila ever to become an occasional afterthought, someone that he used to know well a rather long time ago… She had to be more than that, always.
Fortunately, he had seen this blank canvas of a weekend coming some days ago. There was excellent food to be prepared and eaten, and a bottle of Garnacha which his off-licence acquaintance had promised him was something special. Home-made silk-handkerchief pasta, then, with home-made pesto, and some home-made olive-bread, and because this was to be a magnificent over-indulgence of carbohydrates, he would forego any form of dessert, other than a second glass of wine. Then he had last Sunday’s Telegraph to finish before the new one arrived tomorrow – pressure all the way, eh Smith?
Both the pasta dough and the pesto need to stand a while before the final preparations, and that’s what they were doing when Smith’s mobile began to ring. He tutted and washed the flour from his hands, leaning over at the same time to see that it was Waters.
‘And who is calling The Golden Shot?’
‘You’ve got caller ID enabled, DC – I did it myself, so you know who it is.’
‘Hm… Well, strictly speaking, I know whose phone it is. You might have been mugged last night, and had your phone nicked but have been too embarrassed to tell me about it. Now the mugger is working his way through your contacts for his own nefarious ends.’
‘And he happens to sound just like the person he stole it from…’
‘Fair point – stop this charade. Why are you ringing me up on our day off? If it’s about more domestic abuse, there’s a helpline. I’m not confronting Katherine again, especially now that she knows a bit more about the law.’
Waters laughed but it was weak and half-hearted; Smith knew immediately that he had touched a raw nerve. He waited for something from Waters. When it didn’t come, he said, ‘So, tell me – to what do I owe this honour?’
‘I’ve been doing some background this morning, on Julie Shapiro. I was just going to talk it over with you. Stupid, on a Saturday. Sorry, DC, I’ll-’
‘Have you got something?’
Smith was paying attention now – Waters had been lucky too often in the past couple of years for it to be just luck; he had the knack of looking in the right places, and very often they were places that nobody else
even thought of looking. Remember the money hidden in Philip Wood’s dinghy down in the docks? Without that they would never have arrested Stuart Aves for the manslaughter of James Bell.
‘That’s it, really – I don’t know. There are a couple of odd things.’
As always, he had taken off his Rolex while he was preparing food; after glancing at it, Smith took a wild guess and said, ‘OK. What are you doing now?’
‘Apart from making a nuisance of myself, nothing. Why?’
‘I’ve made some pasta, and it’s no use trying to reduce the quantities to suit a single epicure – I know, I’ve tried often enough. There’s more than enough for two, if you fancy it, and it will only get thrown away if you don’t. Have I told you that one should never, ever re-heat pasta?’
They had eaten first. Waters had tried to get straight into it, probably as a means of justifying turning up on Smith’s day off, but he had been stopped as if he had been spotted by Charlie Hills whilst driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Instead, he had been tasked with carrying the cutlery and crockery out to the patio dining table where they would eat under the shade of a gaily-coloured umbrella – the September summer was due to hold off the fronts gathering in the Atlantic for a couple more days. ‘It isn’t exactly Tuscany,’ Smith had said as they sat down, ‘but you’ll get the general idea. Out there, they don’t eat to live – they live to eat. It’s a much more sensible way of life.’
Waters was about to reply as he took his first mouthful of the pasta, but it silenced him; the pesto was stronger than anything he had ever tasted out of a packet, and he blinked in surprise, chewing more slowly and thoughtfully.
Smith had seen him, and said, ‘Alright?’
‘Alright? It’s amazing! Where did you learn to cook that?’
‘This one was off the telly, I think… I’ve got a couple of books as well. I like Italian food.’
Waters took another forkful, and then another. The more you ate, the better it tasted, and the bread was delicious, and you wanted a sip of that red wine, whatever it was, after every mouthful. He ate until the meal was two thirds gone and then said, ‘You’ve mentioned Italy before. Ever thought of retiring out there?’
‘No. Well, not seriously. What do you do? Either you go and live in an ex-pat community full of retired sales managers and their sun-dried wives, playing golf all day, or you go all-in and find yourself living on a hillside, surrounded by goats where no-one speaks any English. I’m past learning another language now, even goat.’
Waters helped himself to a little more pasta and salad.
‘OK. What about up on the coast? You seem to know most people there already, so you wouldn’t have to learn seal or seagull. I know you can’t live in the caravan permanently, but you could sell this place and get a cottage. As long as it has two bedrooms, we can all take turns to come and stay – me and Serena and John. DI Reeve. Superintendent Allen, even.’
Smith had left a little on his plate. He leaned back in the chair and drank some wine – Alf had been right about this one.
‘God forbid! And have you seen the prices? Even a one-bedroomed place would take everything I’ve got tied up in this one, and some of my pension pot as well. The retiring baby-boomers have more cash in their pockets than any generation before them and most of them want to live on the Norfolk coast. And once you’ve spent every cent on a property, what do you live on? I’d have to get a job…’
The irony wasn’t lost on Waters. Serena was convinced that there was a woman on the scene, somewhere, but Smith kept that side of his life very private, and Waters knew better than to go there uninvited.
Smith said, ‘Anyway, talking of jobs, what have you found out about the mysterious queen of the marshes? Don’t tell me she’s got form after all!’
There was a change of expression on the younger detective’s face and Smith remembered it then, the thought he had had only yesterday - But it’s there, at The Queens Arms, something, anything, a little odd, out of place or different. Something, or someone… It was someone. Odd or different? It was difficult to imagine anyone up there more so than Julie Shapiro. He had not a shred more evidence than he had twenty four hours ago, but the vague hunch had become a conviction; Sokoloff’s death was connected in some way to the presence of the eccentric woman who spent her days watching and walking through the marshes. Scientific officers like Detective Inspector Terek will always say that they have little time for hunches – they will tell you to come back when you have some evidence, which is, when you think about it, simply telling you to go away, and Smith was fine with that. Go away and work it out, preferably with the help of a few like-minded individuals.
‘Right. We’ll have some coffee indoors. Out here I won’t be able to read the screen on your Macpro Book thing. But this had better be good, Waters. That wine is fifteen quid a bottle and you’ve had at least half of it.’
Waters had made notes after all, and he talked through his summary of what he had found, after putting the Wikipedia page up as a starting point. What soon became clear was that though she had been barely twenty years old when she first became successful and then famous, at least as a singer of pop songs, Julie Shapiro had not been a gullible victim of the recording business. There had twice been timely changes of record label, each time increasing her visibility and, no doubt, her earnings. She had fired her first manager, a story that made the front page of “Melody Maker”, and joined a highly successful stable of artists run by someone called Sidney Liebovitz. By the age of twenty three, she had outlasted the typical one or two-hit wonders and was effectively an established figure as the 1960s came to an end. Six singles had reached the top ten, and one, “This Little Broken Heart”, had held onto the top spot for several weeks in 1969.
‘Then,’ said Waters, ‘it goes quiet for a while. There’s one short item in the music press saying that she is working on a new album, which never appeared as far as I can tell, and then in early 1971 – it’s somewhere here… Yes, in March 1971 there’s a story in “Melody Maker” that she is in line for a leading role in something called Godspell. It’s a stage mu-’
‘Godspell? I know what it is, or was. That was the big-time calling – like you going from Kings Lake Central to the Met’s Flying Squad, if there was still such a thing. Godspell, eh? What happened next?’
‘Next is where the mystery begins. Next, she disappears off the face of the earth for about forty three years. All I can find are some indirect references to some of her recordings being included in sixties and seventies compilations, and to a few other later artists producing cover versions of her songs. As far as I can tell, she never performed or recorded again herself. She hasn’t given any interviews that I can find. Public property purchase records hadn’t begun when she bought The Queens Arms but I can say that she bought it twenty years ago this year, in 1996.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘The North-west Norfolk free newspaper found out and covered it as a front-page story that year, and someone somewhere thought that the NWN was worth archiving online. You can even find out who won the Wells Women’s Institute prizes for making jam that year.’
‘Excellent work. Make sure you have a list of those ready for DI Terek on Monday morning. And the Victoria sponges as well.’
Twenty years ago. Smith had already been established on his patch by then, and Julie Shapiro had begun her life as a recluse out there on the saltmarshes. It was around that time, too, that Sheila had been told that she would never have children of her own. Waters, meanwhile, hadn’t yet started primary school…
Too vast to be comprehensible, and no single mind can make sense of it all. “Time is an ocean,” someone had sung “but it ends at the shore”. Smith didn’t feel that he was yet in sight of land but presumably it could not be far over the horizon.
In these situations, Waters had a habit of not telling you everything straight away, and Smith had learned to look out for the clues. He narrowed his gaze on the detec
tive constable’s face, and said, ‘Forty three years, you said – she disappears off the face of the earth for forty three years?’
‘Yes, more or less.’
‘And that was from March 1971, when she was about to step up into entertainment’s Champions’ League. I know you have no interest in football, but you get the general idea. So that brings us up to 2014, doesn’t it?’
Waters pressed a key and a new page appeared on the screen.
He said, ‘DC, you’re going to be wasted stacking shelves or volunteering at the local RSPB shop. Finding this next thing was a fluke, a chance in a million. I was probably on about page fourteen or fifteen of the search results for whatever I last typed in – I tried dozens of variations – and I only found this because the search engine I was using highlights the terms. “Shapiro” is an unusual name, obviously, and, well, this came up.’
The writing on the screen was minute. Smith peered and began muttering mild oaths about reading glasses, but then Waters pressed another key and the whole thing was larger. What he then saw was the report of a case in the civil court that took place in June, two years ago – “Jacobs v Shapiro: Appeal Court Judges Give Unusual Advisory Ruling”.
As Smith was reading the first few lines, Waters said, ‘Shapiro is an unusual name, as I said, but there are a few more people with it than you first think. I reckon I’d already located most of them, so when I glanced at this, I assumed it would be one of the others. But it isn’t – this is Julie Shapiro at the Court of Appeal.’
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