[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (11 page)

The footage looked identical but they all waited dutifully for the minute to pass before the marsh harrier made its scheduled landing yet again.

‘So, not just for the night of the murder, or the night before, but every night. Mark, ideas?’ Shaw asked.

‘My guess is there’s an automatic programme which simply runs this one night’s footage, including the bird, over the actual film, or possibly, the camera’s blind and the footage just replaces a blank image.

‘I’ll check, but my guess is that it is just this one camera, not all six. Either way, it takes a degree of computer technical knowledge to set up the override. Question is did the killer set it up, or did he, or she, just know that camera was blind and take advantage?’

Shaw chose a team of six to go back out to Marsh House with Valentine in charge; they needed to re-interview all night staff and find out who knew about the false camera. It suggested Bright’s killer may well have deliberately used the door under Camera D between eight and six.

Shaw had one more job for Valentine. ‘George – stop off at Copon’s camper van en route. If he’s there rope him in, if the girlfriend’s there, try to get his passport. He’s worked in that nurses’ station for three years, there’s no way he didn’t know the camera was blind. And he’s a smoker. I think he’s just become our first prime suspect.’

THIRTEEN

L
ena was clearing one of the picnic tables outside
Surf!
when she spotted a man picking his way along the sands: grey suit, black shoes, a briefcase, wading through the dunes above the high-water mark, zigzagging a path between sunbathing bodies and families camped out around cool boxes and shell tents. By the time he’d reached the bar his thin hair was damp with sweat.

‘Mrs Shaw? Norfolk Coastal District Council.’ He offered her a photo ID in a see-through wallet. ‘Daniel Richmond.’

‘It’s Braithwaite, not Shaw. The name’s over the door.’ She nodded back towards the bar and the small brass plate over the lintel which held those magic words: ‘licensed to sell’
…

Fumbling with his briefcase he spilt the contents out on the sand. ‘Sorry – of course. My mistake.’

And what a
revealing
mistake, thought Lena. The council had clearly decided she was the wife of DI Peter Shaw, rather than Lena Braithwaite, licensee of The Old Beach Café, Hunstanton – aka
Surf!
, north Norfolk’s newest beach hotspot. She couldn’t work out if that was good news or bad news. Now that the government had removed magistrates from the licensing process, the local town hall was judge and jury on her opening hours.

‘I’m making coffee, or tea?’ She considered offering a glass of white wine but there was something of the petty bureaucrat about Richmond which held her back.

The clock on the veranda read 11.32 a.m., so they were open to sell alcohol, and Leo D’Asti, Lena’s business partner, was behind the bar. A chef and two trainee cooks were already preparing sandwiches and salads. Fran – the Shaws’ daughter – was on a day trip to London with friends, so the pace was professional, a note of commercial tension in the brisk activity. The supermoon party had boosted takings by a clear £2,300 – cashflow, not profits, but a triumph nonetheless. If Lena could come up with an event a week in the summer, the business model would be transformed from a 1950s tea-shack to something much more exciting: a template for a string of bar/restaurants perhaps, on some of the country’s finest beaches.

Over a pot of tea, they dealt swiftly with introductions. Richmond was Assistant Licensing Officer for the council, based in Hunstanton. They’d received an application to allow
Surf!
to sell alcohol over the bank holiday weekend, three days, from 10.30 a.m. to 11.30 p.m.

‘Quite a place …’ said Richmond, trying not to look at two women sauntering by, topless.
Surf!
was a clear country mile from the family beaches at Hunstanton, and the atmosphere was cosmopolitan, more Chelsea-on-Sea than kiss-me-quick. Lena’s chin came up, proud of what she’d created, letting her eyes flit over the twenty picnic tables, already crowded with customers crumbling saffron cake, or pouring Nicaraguan blend from glass cafetières. One couple, in their mid-thirties, had a wine cooler between them, the stem of a bottle of Prosecco studded with drops of condensation.

Yes, quite a place. It was certainly a very different place from the one they’d bought seven years earlier. That first day Shaw had led her along the beach, she’d seen it in the distance: The Old Beach Café – a wooden hut, with a stone cottage behind and the Old Boathouse – a slated shed, the roof held down by rocks strung in a net. All theirs for £80,000 freehold, with no road access, no mains power and a cesspit back in the dunes. Now, a thirty-foot wind turbine turned languidly in the breeze, each blade painted a different poster-box colour. (Fran’s idea – to mimic the sandcastle windmills.) The Boathouse, converted to a shop, now sold everything from Hunstanton key rings at sixty-five pence to para-kites at £4,000.

She caught it then, the sudden malicious glint in Richmond’s dull eyes. Now that he’d recovered his composure, Lena could see he was late-twenties, his card had listed initials after his name: BA, MBA. It occurred to her she’d underestimated him, and that she needed to concentrate. Staying in business was about identifying risks. Suddenly she saw Richmond for what he was: a bundle of sticky red tape waiting to unfurl.

‘We’re minded to recommend to the licensing committee that your application be refused, Mrs … er, Ms Braithwaite. The timing is problematic. But perhaps you could explain …’

‘I’m in business, I want to make money. It’s a bar. There’s more people around at bank holiday.’ Lena smiled and was delighted to see Richmond’s face flush in response.

‘Yes,’ said Richmond, laughing joylessly. ‘But the pilgrimage, you’ll be aware of the kind of thing that can happen. The riot of 2001 for example …’

‘That would be nearly fifteen years ago, Mr Richmond.’

The so-called Walsingham ‘riot’ was a piece of local legend of a tenacious quality. Lena suspected that the sight of colourful saris on the sands of north Norfolk, not to mention ceremonial swords, had delivered some kind of visceral culture shock to the largely white, middle- to upper-class holidaymakers, who provided the core of her clientele, and of every business from Old Hunstanton to Cromer. A hundred miles of old-fashioned, fifties English seaside heaven, a stretch of landscape and seascape which formed, quite accidentally, a kind of Enid Blyton theme park, a living, breathing, shoreline from a totally imaginary past.

‘Mr Richmond, I’m not from around here. I grew up in Brixton. I’m a lawyer by training. I used to work for the Campaign for Racial Equality. There were riots in Brixton in 1981 – 280 police officers were injured. In 1985 fifty-five cars were burnt out. In 1995 the Met had to enforce a two-mile exclusion zone, closing down the tube and stationing helicopters overhead. I only mention this because it means that I have a pretty vivid idea of what constitutes a riot, and I’m afraid half-a-dozen tanked-up Tamils having a quick pee over someone’s fence doesn’t do it for me.’

Dimly a voice told her to calm down and she wished Shaw was there, because he was more objective about the business, and faced with a bureaucrat like Richmond he’d have simply sat back and played out a long rope, waiting for him to tie his own noose.

‘Machetes were confiscated, Ms Braithwaite. Last year several police forces coordinated in searching vehicles en route to Walsingham. Credible information suggested that guns were being carried.’

‘And what actually happened? Nothing. This isn’t about civil unrest, it’s about the cosy world of north Norfolk’s retirees being stirred by a sudden influx of outsiders behaving with a little less decorum than the local WI. I’ll say it if you won’t, Mr Richmond –
black
outsiders.’

‘I see,’ said Richmond, blinking, calculating. ‘We don’t think it is a particularly good idea to open a bar all day, and pretty much all night, when certain volatile elements may be in the area. I’m sure you understand the realities of the situation.’ Richmond seemed especially pleased with this meaningless gem, so much so that he couldn’t stop himself saying what was in his head: ‘There are, after all, nearly 160,000 Tamils in Britain.’

Even he knew he’d gone too far. There was a long silence in which a flock of seagulls overhead tried to dismember the skeleton of a rock salmon.

Lena stretched out her legs. ‘Oh. I see. We’re going to be inundated, are we – overrun, even? No, there’s a better word.
Swamped
.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Most Tamils are Muslim, Mr Richmond. I don’t want to be rude, but you might get your facts right. Less than six per cent are Christian. That’s 10,000, or less, in total. Is each one a volatile element, or is it just a collective threat?’

‘The bar could encourage anti-social behaviour. Especially late at night.’

‘Well. Two things. This place will be shut and shuttered by 11.35 p.m. all three nights. Second: you’ve just walked the beach from the nearest road, Mr Richmond. If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look too pleased with the effort required. Coachloads, or even carloads, of pilgrims will bring their own alcohol. Do you think they’re really going to hike a mile along the beach for a sundowner at £4.50 a glass?’

Her voice had climbed a notch and she saw Leo D’Asti on the terrace of the café looking her way, trying to work out if she needed help; she shook her head quickly and he melted away.

‘We’re minded to recommend refusal,’ said Richmond.

‘I’m minded to ring the local paper and give them a rough précis of our conversation so far. Would you like to see what that means in terms of newsprint on a page?’

Richmond’s eyes went blank.

‘There’s been threats,’ he said, and bit his lip. ‘Specific threats. I shouldn’t tell you this, but we are concerned. There are people planning to disrupt the pilgrimage. Activists.’

‘What threats, against whom? What kind of activists?’

‘I’ve said too much. But I’m only trying to help.’

‘Then be specific.’

‘I can’t.’

‘When will I hear about the licence?’

‘In twenty-four hours. Less.’

He extricated himself from the picnic table bench before pointing to the telegraph wire which ran in a loop between
Surf!
and the Old Boathouse shop. Midway along a pair of brightly coloured trainers swung on their laces.

‘You should let the police know about those – they’ve got a shoe squad to take them down in Lynn. They’re linked to drug sales, apparently, or worse. Unsightly at the very least, don’t you think?’

‘They’re my daughter’s,’ said Lena, staying in her seat. ‘She threw them up to celebrate her GCSE results and a new pair of trainers. It’s what kids do.’

Lena watched him walk away, her reflective black Ray-Bans mirroring the first clouds of the day.

FOURTEEN

J
ulia Fortis, administrator of Marsh House, commanded an austere attic office. A set of two wide dormer windows looked north towards the sea and the sun, reflected off the flood tide, bounced and shimmered in blue and green light on the plastered ceiling. Thrown open, the windows admitted a warm breeze and the distant brittle jangle of rigging against masts. A whiteboard on the wall was covered in intricate mathematical calculations, dominated by a single equation: w/10 + 20 = mph, which Shaw recognized. There was very little in the room which looked personal, save a half-length summer wetsuit hanging from a hook, a fitness bike and a picture on a bookcase shelf of an elderly woman holding a spray of flowers.

Fortis, in a white blouse, sat rigidly behind a modern desk, upon which was a flipped-open laptop, listening to Shaw’s brief summary of what the CCTV had revealed: that Marsh House’s six-camera security system was actually a five-camera system, that Camera D was effectively ‘blind’, or worse, programmed to simply repeat a standard pre-recorded shot; a digital facade, beyond which anything might happen, unseen between eight in the evening and six in the morning.

From the terrace below they heard the thin strains of Radio Four, and a single clash of a china cup on a china saucer, while somewhere the water pipes hummed as a shower unit ran. It occurred to Shaw that while every home had a series of distinctive noises – pipes banging, floorboards creaking – Marsh House presented a much richer soundtrack, reflecting the many lives lived under one roof.

‘Your CV lists a degree in computer science, Ms Fortis,’ said Shaw. Armed with a magistrates’ warrant the CID team had gained access to the trust’s employee records. Fortis had worked at Marsh House for five years, taking up a trainee position in 2010 straight from university. She was unmarried, lived in a harbour-side flat conversion in Wells, and had from 2007 been a member of the British Barefoot Skiing team, an extreme watersport which required skiers to ride barefoot at high speeds behind a tow boat. The sport was popular on the coast because of its wide, open, rock-free beaches and shallow, gently shelving sands. Lena sold the appropriate gear in the Old Boathouse, ranging from special wetsuits and ski shoes for beginners to padded neoprene shorts and harnesses.

‘Did you install the CCTV override on Camera D?’ Shaw asked.

To one side of Fortis’ desk sat Guy Edgecombe, whose business card had described him as a partner in a City law firm that represented Starlight Trust, the owners of Marsh House. Shaw had rung Fortis less than half an hour earlier to arrange an interview, so the presence of Edgecombe meant either that he was on the premises anyway, or that he had been drafted in from his holiday, given his office address was High Holborn, in London’s West End. As he was dressed in a pair of navy blue designer shorts and what could only be described as an Hawaiian shirt, the latter seemed likely.

‘I think the answer to that question can wait,’ he said. His feet were bare and, Shaw noted, still coated on the upper side with sand.

‘This is a murder inquiry, so I’ll decide what can wait.’

Edgecombe’s narrow, equine face – deeply tanned – beamed a charming £500-an-hour legal smile at the detectives.