by Jim Kelly
Shaw held the mobile screen to his good eye, then took the call.
‘George.’
‘Peter. The nick at Burnham Market runs a nightline. They clocked a call from Louise Wighton about an hour ago – she’s the wife of Geoff, the ex-copper who now babysits second homes?’
‘And …’ Shaw was already out in the corridor, gently closing the bedroom door.
‘Wighton set out late evening to check one of his properties. One of the security firm control centres phoned to say the alarm had been triggered. He hasn’t come back. Big posh manor house in a hamlet up by Burnham Norton. I’ve got a mobile unit on its way from Wells. She says he never – ever – fails to come home on time. As of now he’s eight hours late. His mobile’s taking calls but he’s not answering.’
‘A hamlet, you said?’
‘East Tines. Never heard of it, but I’ve found it on the OS. Postcode’s 4PG NN6 if you use the GPS. I’ll text it.’
Shaw dressed in the kitchen then ran the 1.4 miles to the lifeboat house. The Porsche purred in the night as he edged it up the lane towards the coast road. The dashboard clock read 04:05. He met a fox trotting down the track towards the beach, curiously unconcerned. The dunes loomed, pale and cold in the white security lights triggered by the car’s movement, revealing the new boathouse, a café, a row of converted fishermen’s cottages. Outside one stood a single bottle of milk. At the top of the lane a white owl sat on a fence post, the turntable head tracking the car as it slipped past.
The journey to East Tines was 8.46 miles – according to the car’s satnav, which led him along a narrow B-road bound for Burnham Norton, hugging the contour of the hills. Valentine’s Mazda came into view, slewed across the carriageway, 200 yards short of the edge of the hamlet. Down in the valley Shaw could see the church at Burnham Overy Town, its square tower rising out of a skein of pre-dawn mist which tracked the river.
‘Unit from Wells is on the other side … here,’ said Valentine, shining a torch on to a map spread on the Mazda’s bonnet. He indicated a small road on the far side of the hamlet.
‘Back-up?’
‘Sorry. I’ve pulled all the rank I’ve got and there’s a traffic unit on the way from the A10 but it’ll be half an hour – probably longer.’
The OS map revealed that East Tines constituted half-a-dozen buildings, two of them clearly once farms, with buildings set around yards, a single track in and out. They could see nothing against the horizon except a grain silo and a stand of pine trees. A dog barked down in the valley. A sky full of stars wheeled over their heads and Shaw succumbed to a regular illusion, that he could hear the heavens turning, as if they emitted the whisper of celestial mechanics.
‘We could wait,’ said Valentine. ‘If he’s run into the burglars he could be lying low waiting for them to move on. Or they might be doing several houses, and he’s keeping his head down until he’s sure they’re done. We could sit tight too, wait for the back-up unit. This might be our chance to nab the lot.’
‘Lying low for eight hours? If he’s here, George, he can’t get out. Plain and simple,’ said Shaw. ‘We need to get him out, and we need to do it fast.’
Shaw splayed his fingers over the image of the hamlet on the OS map: ‘Radio the mobile unit, George. Tell ’em to block the road with the squad car on their side and then proceed with caution. We’ll meet them in the middle.’
The map showed a short track leading out of the centre of East Tines towards the brow of the hill. Tines Manor was marked: a large house with two wings, and what looked like a walled estate garden. The remains of a medieval moat were shown as two parallel dotted lines.
Setting out along the lane their footsteps spooked something in the ditch, which scurried ahead of them and then bustled through a hedge. As Shaw’s eyes switched to night vision, the hamlet began to emerge from the shadows: two houses with low roofs to the right, one showing a light over a door. The silo stood to the left. A triangular rough green opened out to reveal a bench, a rustic water pump and a pair of cat’s eyes in the shadows.
A pool of torchlight flickered into view along the sandy path and a voice asked, ‘DS Valentine?’
The uniformed police officer was called Richardson. Shaw knew the face because he’d won some kind of medal for clay pigeon shooting and had featured in the force’s newsletter. His partner, PC Johns, had stayed with the squad car, he said, and would deal with the traffic unit if and when it arrived.
‘No sign of Wighton?’ asked Shaw.
‘Nothing, sir. But we got a call from control. One of the residents here has phoned in to say there’s an odd noise coming from Tines Hill – that’s up there …’ He pointed north, to where the pine trees broke the starry horizon. ‘The big house is in the lee of the woods.’
They walked for two hundred yards and then Valentine called a halt. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the noise.’ He stood, hatchet head skewed to one side. Shaw had noticed his DS’s ability to hear beyond the normal range before: not high notes, but bass. It was as if his feet could pick up faint shockwaves in the earth. Perhaps it was the slip-ons.
In the silence they heard a rhythmic, regular chiming, like a toneless bell. Shaw measured the signal: once every four seconds. The note had a vibrant quality, as if it contained several tones, all in the same flat key.
‘There’s no church,’ said Valentine, effortlessly reading Shaw’s mind. Looking back down to the village they noted two more lights at windows in the cottages round the green and a single dog bark set off a necklace of answering howls.
Tines Manor came into view, framed by two dark cedar trees, which seemed to throw protective arms around the brickwork. The walls were seven foot high and topped with crushed glass. As they approached up the lane the rhythmic thud changed in nature. There was a more resonant edge now, as if someone was playing a tubular bell. The gates stood open, a security light illuminating the façade: twelve Georgian windows, a Downing Street door, a climbing wisteria.
‘It’s not an alarm, is it?’ asked Shaw. ‘The noise. Perhaps it went off and they just thumped it with a wrench to disable it, and this is what’s left.’
Valentine examined his phone. ‘Signal’s good. So that’s another question: why hasn’t he phoned home?’
Shaw took a step back and scanned the windows, shaking his head. ‘What’s your first name, Constable?’
‘Paul, sir.’
‘OK, Paul. I think we have a duty to try and find Geoff Wighton asap – and not just because he used to be a copper. So here’s what you do. Circle the house, get round the back, keep your eyes open, and try not to make too much noise. If someone does a runner follow them, radio for assistance, keep your distance. Otherwise, complete the circle and meet us back here. If we’re gone, we’re inside. Follow us in. No heroics. Got it?’
He nodded, readjusting his cap.
As Shaw and Valentine approached the front door, they heard Richardson’s boots on the gravel, then silence, as he stepped on to the lawn and disappeared into the shadows beneath one of the cedar trees.
Shaw stood on the step. The resonant drumming seemed to be radiating from the walls themselves. Placing his gloved hand on the door, he found it swung open, the polished black paint shimmering with a reflection of the stars. Inside all was dark and smelt of air freshener and wood polish.
Shaw played his torchbeam up the stairs. ‘Ground floor, George. I’ll take upstairs. Let’s keep talking.’
Shaw didn’t believe in creeping around in the dark. With one hand he flipped six light switches.
‘Police!’ He used his serrated voice, and the echo made a wall mirror vibrate. ‘Police! CID. Make yourself known. Now.’
Upstairs he counted five bedrooms and called out, in turn, that each was empty. Valentine checked two living rooms, a boot room, and a pantry. All empty. No evidence of burglary.
Valentine was waiting for Shaw at the foot of the stairs. Around them the constant drumming had gained in volume, and the beat was slightly qui
cker.
‘One thing you should see,’ said Valentine.
The kitchen, which was still in darkness, held a massive wide-screen smart TV on one wall. Someone had created a Word document and typed in an illuminated message, bold, in seventy-two point type:
WE’LL BE BACK
On the central island worktop there was an iPhone.
‘Wighton’s?’ suggested Shaw. He picked it up in his gloved hand and the screen lit up. He brought up messages and the first was from Standard Security Systems Ltd to say that the alarm system at Tines Manor had been tripped at 8.04 p.m.: a rear window in the garden boot room.
A torchbeam played on the windows and they saw Richardson standing beyond the double glazing. Valentine switched on all the lights and the garden lit up, revealing a large, sky-blue kidney-shaped swimming pool.
The constable shook his head quickly, then moved on.
Shaw put his hand on one of the large double radiators. ‘Sound’s coming from these …’
‘Loft?’ suggested Valentine.
‘Cellar?’ countered Shaw.
There was a Yale key in the lock of the door under the stairs. As Shaw began to turn it the thudding stopped dead. The breath of a cellar greeted them as the door opened; that particular blend of damp and rot, staleness, and coal dust.
A single light bulb illuminated bare brick walls. Geoff Wighton sat on a stool by the wall drinking coffee from a plastic cup held in his right hand. In his left he held a coal scuttle with which, it seemed, he’d been rapping a pipe which emerged from a large lagged boiler.
‘What took you?’ he said. He looked bored, and perhaps scared, but he was hiding that well. There was blood at his hairline and a definite bruising to the temple.
‘You all right?’ asked Shaw.
‘Oh, yeah. I might die of embarrassment, but nothing else.’
They helped him up the stairs to the kitchen.
Wighton directed Valentine to a drinks cabinet in the front room and the DS came back with three malts. Shaw added water to his but Wighton just knocked it straight down his throat and asked for a refill. Valentine went out to find PC Richardson and stand him down.
A minute later they were all back in the kitchen.
‘I got a call from the insurers about eight. Alarm tripped – rear boot room. So I came in here, put my mobile down – I won’t do that again – and went and checked the locks. It all looked good to me – no sign of damage, nothing. I went down to the cellar to reset the security panel. I’d got to the top of the cellar stairs, switched off the light, turned to lock the door behind me and my lights went out. Next thing I know I’m down at the bottom of the stairs, on my back.’
He tipped his head forward to reveal the wound on the top of his skull. ‘It’s not just the one blow, by the way – feels like they got in a second before I hit the ground. Bastards. Didn’t even see a shadow.’ He stood up, stretched, then sat down again quickly. ‘Sorry. Bit dazed.’
‘Take it easy,’ said Shaw. ‘Stay put. There’s an ambulance on the way.’
‘One thing,’ said Wighton. ‘I keep my eyes open. I never just turn up at a property. I park a bit away. I left the van down the far lane in a farmyard, then walked up, making observations. Textbook stuff. Down by the green there was a van parked.’
He licked his lips: ‘White van – Ford. Crest on the side said Norfolk County Council. I bet it ain’t there now.’
Shaw recalled the one empty bench, the water pump but no vehicles – vans or otherwise.
‘If you saw that parked in the street in daylight hours what would you think?’ asked Wighton. ‘Drains, council tax, street lights, council house rents. It’s the vehicle equivalent of standing around with a clipboard. You could go anywhere, park anywhere, and who’s going to notice? Pretty much perfect anytime between early morning and nightfall. Even at night on a street. Mind you, looks bloody suspicious at four o’clock in the morning in the middle of East Tines. My guess is it’s the vehicle of choice for the Chelsea Burglars.’
Wighton beamed. ‘Did I mention I got the reg? Well – I can remember a bit of it. DN10. Definitely DN10.’
He tore the page out of his notebook and gave it to Shaw. ‘Enjoy.’
TWENTY-TWO
A doorstep, six-thirty, and the town soaked by a sea mist. The paintwork solid black, with a Georgian skylight, and an old gas lamp, now rusted. A foot-scraper too, with a pint of milk lodged in the hole. Valentine stood under the lintel and watched the water drip methodically an inch from his nose. He’d not returned to bed after the call-out to East Tines but had instead gone to St James’ and spent the last few hours in the CID room reading the case notes on the Chelsea Burglars. Two facets of the crimes stood out: their meticulous planning, and the graffiti. In his experience criminals – the rank and file – were heroically stupid. While they might prosper in the short term on rat-like cunning, reckless courage, or sheer chutzpah, they almost always did something totally brainless which allowed them to be scooped up by the police. This lot were different. One or more of them clearly possessed more than a GCSE in pilfering. And not only were they meticulous, well prepared and organized – they also felt the need to express political ideas. Or at least one of them did.
Which explained his presence on a doorstep in Adelaide Gardens: a backstreet half a mile from the town centre, with parked cars bumper-to-bumper on one side. Damp had got under the terrace façades and one or two of the narrow, four-storey houses were boarded up; almost all had multiple door buzzers, with the names of bedsit residents scrawled under the plastic. Valentine noted the nationalities implied: Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Romanian. There was a pub on the corner – the Bathfield – which looked like a hangover in brick: lightless, slightly off the vertical and the horizontal, waiting for opening time to bring it back to life.
A figure appeared out of the mist. Slightly built, maybe five foot eight, with a large head on a thin neck and narrow shoulders. The footsteps were neat and businesslike, and he carried a leather satchel.
‘DS Valentine?’ The voice was authoritative without being in any way distinctive. A pair of glasses with metal rims caught the red glow of a street light which had fallen out of sync in its daylight, night-time routine.
‘Hope I’m on time. I live in the North End so I walked – don’t do that enough. Any of us.’
‘Thanks for making it so early – it’s a help.’
‘No problem. I’m an early riser. Always have been.’
He’d produced a key and the door was soon open, some pale electric light spilling out on the damp pavement.
‘Come in – make yourself at home, such as it is.’
There were no carpets inside, just a bare staircase, and a corridor festooned with posters: Troops Out, Defeat Thatcher, CND, and a framed one, a reprint from 1945, of a giant V on the landscape with the slogan: ‘And Now – Win The Peace’.
Valentine counted three bare light bulbs as they made their way to the first floor, then the second, and along a corridor to an office.
‘Clem Whyte,’ he said finally, offering a small, narrow hand. ‘Welcome to the citadel of freedom. Party’s been here since 1903. We’ve always shared it with the Trades Council – they’ve got a chamber upstairs, very grand – well, it was, before the Great War. Not exactly an idea whose time has come, is it? Trade unionism. Hasn’t seemed to stop the Germans making a modern country out of the same ideal. But there we are.’
Valentine wasn’t listening to a word he said. Politics, in the formal party sense, had never been of any interest to him. Faced with a ballot box he voted Labour, but only because he felt that it was expected of him.
Whyte had to be fifty, with a little bushy moustache, and a narrow face to match the shoulders. Shaw wondered if they made adult shirts with that small a neck measurement.
‘How can we help?’ he said, filling a kettle at a small sink. ‘I’ve got half an hour. Then it’s time for the work they pay me for.’
Valentine walked
to the window and saw that the mist had thickened and the pale sun had gone.
‘Nothing exciting, I’m afraid, sir. We’ve got an outbreak of graffiti – house fronts, a few public buildings, bus stops. Petty, I know – but annoying, and the last thing we need is the taxpayers on our backs.’
Whyte took the one comfy seat behind a desk and steepled his fingers.
‘And the subject matter of the graffiti?’
‘Broadly anti-second-homes slogans. Go home bankers – that kind of thing.’
‘And you thought: I know, I’ll pop round to the Labour Party.’
‘I was hoping you might be able to give me a list of the current membership – purely for elimination purposes.’ Valentine knew he wasn’t going to get any such list. But the request gave him a reason to cross the threshold, and when Whyte turned him down he could gracefully concede the point, and then fish around for the details he was really after.
‘West Norfolk Constabulary can afford an anti-graffiti CID unit these days? Last time I looked, you lot were looking for a million pounds in cuts.’
Valentine detected a mild anti-police tone, but he decided not to retaliate. Besides, he was looking forward to a cup of tea.
‘It would be of help to our inquiries.’
‘I’m sure it would. And I’d love to help, but it’s not possible. Our membership details are confidential.’
‘It’s not an unreasonable inquiry, is it? I don’t suppose anyone’s ashamed of being a member, are they? I’m looking for a politically motivated campaigner – motivated enough to commit a crime, which is what it is. I thought you might have some young bloods in the party.’