The Skeleton Man

The setting sun broke free of the clouds for a moment at the death and in a splash of light out at sea Shaw counted six cockle-pickers’ boats, heading in for Lynn. He scanned the ruffled seascape with a telescope raised to his good eye. The iris was blue, as pale as falling water; the other was covered by a dressing, secured with a plaster across the socket, the inflamed red edges of a fresh scar just visible beneath. ‘A bright yellow drum, right? Mustard, like the other one.’ He put a finger to the wound, a plain wedding band catching the light. ‘And floating a foot clear of the water. So where is it?’

Shaw’s face mirrored the wide-open seascape; the kind of face that’s always scanning a horizon. His cheekbones were high, as if some enterprising warrior from the Mongol Horde had wandered off to the north Norfolk coast, pitching his tent by the beach huts. The skin on his forehead was tight, tanned and unlined. He stood with his feet squarely apart, matching the width of his shoulders, as if he owned the beach.

DS Valentine looked at his watch. He’d bought it at the Tuesday Market in Lynn for one pound and was pretty sure the word ROLEX was fake. Its tick-tock was oddly loud, but the second hand had stopped. He shivered, his head like a vulture’s, hung low on a thin neck. He tried to keep his mouth shut because he knew his teeth would ache if they got caught in the wind. Shaw, who studied faces as closely as George Valentine studied the odds at Newmarket, thought his DS’s bore a remarkable resemblance to a whippet’s, the lines around his lips – the striae – turning his mouth into a small snout.

A radio crackled and Valentine retrieved it from the shapeless raincoat. He listened, said simply ‘Right.’ Fumbling it back inside the folds of the coat he retrieved a tube of mints, popping one, crunching it immediately. ‘Coastguard. They lost sight of the drum an hour ago. The water’s churning up with the tide.’ He shrugged as if he knew the moods of the ocean. ‘Not hopeful.’

‘We’ll wait,’ said Shaw, running a hand through close-cropped fair hair. ‘An hour. The tide’ll turn.’

They stood together, one looking south, the other north, wondering how it had come to this.

Shaw and Valentine, North Norfolk Constabulary’s latest investigative duo. Some joker in admin, thought Shaw, some old lag who knew the past and didn’t care about the future. They needed a new partner for Shaw, who at thirty-one years of age was the force’s youngest DI, the whiz-kid with the fancy degree and a father once tipped to be the next chief constable. And they’d come up with George Valentine – a living relic of a different world, where crooks were villains, and coppers gave hooligans a clip round the ear. A man who’d been the best detective of his generation until one mistake had put him on a blacklist from which he’d never escaped. A man whose career trajectory now looked like a brick returning to earth.

Shaw walked down to the water’s edge and let the next wave leave white bubbles on the toecap of his boot. Valentine followed reluctantly, popping another mint, the fingers on his right hand phlegm-yellow from cigarette stains. Half a mile east Shaw could see a clump of trees marking the point where the creeping dunes had come to rest for a lifetime, a row of low hummocks thirty foot high. Gun Hill. Just below the crest were the cracked remains of a military emplacement, the metal fittings for an Ack-Ack gun in the concrete, snow in the rusted grooves. He’d stood there a decade ago with his mother, watching his father’s ashes blow away into the beach grass.

Detective Chief Inspector Jack Shaw. Shaw had been proud of his father, proud to follow in his footsteps, proud he’d defied him by joining the police: the one career Jack Shaw didn’t want for his only son. They’d loved the beach; father and child. It was the only place where his father could forget the job. The only place where they’d shared the same world.

‘Let’s get up there,’ said Shaw, pointing at the hill. ‘Get some height.’

Valentine nodded without enthusiasm. Water welled in his eyes and he sniffed. ‘I think I’m allergic…’ he said, taking as big a breath as he could into his damaged lungs, ‘to something.’

‘It’s fresh air, George,’ said Shaw.

Valentine wondered if that was Peter Shaw’s idea of a joke. He dabbed his nose, the physical need for nicotine almost tangible. He’d had a sense of humour once, but he was tired of being laughed at, even if most people didn’t do it to his face.

Out at sea the sandbanks had all gone but Shaw could just see the cockle-pickers’ boats in the purple gloom of the sunset, rising and falling on the swell. Valentine looked inland, along the curve of the high water mark. ‘There,’ he said, taking a bare hand reluctantly from his coat pocket.

A yellow metal oil drum, on its side now, rolling in with the waves.