A Place of Hiding

“But terribly cold,” Deborah said. “I can’t understand how he did it. In December? It’s extraordinary, don’t you think?”


“Some people like extremity,” St. James said. “Let’s have a look around.”

“What are we looking for, exactly?”

“Something the police may have missed.”

The actual spot of the murder was easy enough to find: The signs of a crime scene were still upon it in the form of a strip of yellow police tape, two discarded film canisters from the police photographer, and a globule of white plaster that had spilled when someone took a cast of a footprint.

St. James and Deborah started at this spot and began working side by side in an ever-widening circumference round it.

The going was slow. Eyes fixed to the ground, they wheeled round and round, turning over the larger stones that they came upon, gently moving aside seaweed, sifting through sand with their fingertips. In this manner, an hour passed as they examined the small beach, uncovering a top to a jar of baby food, a faded ribbon, an empty Evian bottle, and seventy-eight pence in loose change.

When they came to the bulwark, St. James suggested that they begin at opposite ends and work their way towards each other. At the point at which they would meet, he said, they would just continue onwards so each of them would have separately inspected the entire length of the wall. They had to go carefully, for there were heavier stones here and more crevices in which items could fall. But although each of them moved at earthworm pace, they met at the middle empty-handed.

“This isn’t looking very hopeful,” Deborah noted.

“It isn’t,” St. James agreed. “But it was always just a chance.” He rested for a moment against the wall, his arms crossed on his chest and his gaze on the Channel. He gave consideration to the idea of lies: those people tell and those people believe. Sometimes, he knew, the people in both cases were the same. Telling something long enough resulted in belief.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Deborah said. “If we don’t find something—”

He put his arm round her and kissed the side of her head. “Let’s keep going,” he told her but said nothing of what was obvious to him: Finding something could be even more damning than having the misfortune of finding nothing at all.

They continued like crabs along the wall, St. James slightly more inhibited by his leg brace, which made moving among the larger stones more difficult for him than it was for his wife. Perhaps this was the reason the cry of exultation—marking the discovery of something hitherto unnoticed—

was given by Deborah some fifteen minutes into the final part of their search.

“Here!” she called. “Simon, look here.”

He turned and saw that she’d reached the far end of the bulwark at the point where the slipway dipped down to the water. She was gesturing to the corner where the bulwark and the slipway met, and when St. James moved in her direction, she squatted to have a better look at what she’d found.

“What is it?” he asked as he came alongside her.

“Something metallic,” she said. “I didn’t want to pick it up.”

“How far down?” he asked.

“Less than a foot, I dare say,” she replied. “If you want me to—”

“Here.” He handed her a handkerchief.

To reach the object, she had to wedge her leg into a ragged opening, which she did enthusiastically. She crammed herself down far enough to grasp and then rescue what she’d seen from above.

This turned out to be a ring. Deborah brought it forth and laid it cushioned by the handkerchief on the palm of her hand for St. James’s inspection. It looked made of bronze, sized for a man. And its decoration was man-sized as well. This comprised a skull and crossed bones. On the top of the skull were the numbers 39/40 and below them four words engraved in German. St. James squinted to make them out: Die Festung im Westen.

“Something from the war,” Deborah murmured as she scrutinised the ring herself. “But it can’t have been here all these years.”

“No. Its condition doesn’t suggest that.”

“Then what...?”

St. James folded the handkerchief round it, but he left the ring resting in Deborah’s hand. “It needs to be checked,” he said. “Le Gallez will want to have it fingerprinted. There won’t be much on it, but even a partial could help.”

“How could they have not seen it?” Deborah asked, and St. James could tell she expected no answer.

Nonetheless he said, “DCI Le Gallez considers the evidence of an ageing woman not wearing her spectacles sufficient unto the day. I think it’s a safe bet to conclude he isn’t looking as hard as he could for anything that might refute what she’s told him.”

Deborah examined the small white bundle in her hand and then looked at her husband. “This could be evidence,” she said. “Beyond the hair they found, beyond the footprint they have, beyond witnesses who might be lying about what they saw in the first place. This could change everything, couldn’t it, Simon?”