![[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/576866/thumbs/152x264/ps-gv-6-death-on-demand.jpg)
thin film of paint and canvas, or a fragile lath of wood, beyond which lay the unknown, or at least the unknowable. Perhaps the power of these images lay in this sense that they were simply windows, flimsy barriers between the present and the past, the living and the dead.
SEVEN
A s Javi Copon walked out of the sea, summoned by Shaw’s loudhailer, the detective tallied up the value of his surfing gear: a £1,000 Megaseaweed winter wetsuit, a £500 Studer FlexTail surfboard, and a pair of £150 sand shoes – brand unknown, but they looked like top of the range Tribords. Not bad for a care home nurse.
Copon emerged from the waves reluctantly, as if the salty sea was his chosen element and that he resented this summons to return to the gravity of the earth. Around him stretched Holkham beach, six straight miles of open sand, backed by pine woods, facing the North Sea. In high summer a crowd of several thousand could be entirely lost on this vast swathe of pristine beach. Shaw had been delighted after seeing Shakespeare in Love at the cinema in Lynn with Lena to discover, in the credits, that the final breathtaking vistas of Viola stepping ashore in the untouched New World of the seventeenth century had been filmed right here, a few miles along the coast from Surf!. (A still from the film was now framed over the bar.)
Copon began the long wade out of the shallows.
According to Fortis, the Marsh House administrator, Copon lived at Flat 18, Houghton House, South End, Lynn. Uniformed branch had checked the address out and found it occupied by an elderly couple who had been in residence for nearly thirteen years. They’d never heard of Javi Copon, but they did think immigrants were ruining the country, although Spaniards weren’t as bad as Portuguese, or Romanians. DC Twine had asked around, finding Copon had several friends on the staff at Marsh House. One, a Spanish woman who made beds, had told them where to find him if the sea was running a swell.
If Shaw had been alone he’d have joined Copon in the sea rather than dragging him out on dry land. How many more days as good as this would there be before winter blew in from the pole? The offshore breeze was creating perfect waves in a moderate swell. Surfers called such waves A-Frame – ideal, high-backed, curling breakers, offering the expert the chance to stay up on his – or her – feet for several hundred yards.
Javi was compact, muscled, with a good set of surfer’s teeth, which disappeared when Shaw flashed his warrant card and told him everything he needed to know about the death of Ruby Bright.
‘Why the false address?’ asked Shaw.
Javi worked a hand round his neck and slipped the zip on the wetsuit, shrugging himself out of the top half, so that it hung loose, making him look like a multi-legged pond-skater. Steam rose off his flesh, which was strangely pale, with black hair matted in swirls.
‘You need an address to get the job. I make it up, they don’t check. No one ever checks, right? Otherwise I never get work nowhere. I live here, in a camper van, and go up and down the coast. November I’ll drive home. Three years now I come back to Marsh House. It’s a lifestyle, the whole …’ He waved his arms around to indicate some invisible over-arching structure. ‘The whole corporate world, it can’t handle people like me.’
He produced a small oilskin package from the suit pocket, within which was a crumpled pack of Gitanes and a lighter.
‘Where’s home?’ asked Shaw.
‘Zarautz,’ he said, drawing in the nicotine.
Shaw knew of the town, a surfer’s paradise on the north coast of Spain, once patronized by the royal families of Europe, keen to escape the searing heat of the south. Shaw suspected that Copon was a middle-class boy, drawn to radical, anti-capitalist politics.
‘I need to wash the suit down,’ said Copon, and so they set off towards the woods, a path opening out, leading due south.
The Spaniard’s VW Camper, no
SEVEN
A s Javi Copon walked out of the sea, summoned by Shaw’s loudhailer, the detective tallied up the value of his surfing gear: a £1,000 Megaseaweed winter wetsuit, a £500 Studer FlexTail surfboard, and a pair of £150 sand shoes – brand unknown, but they looked like top of the range Tribords. Not bad for a care home nurse.
Copon emerged from the waves reluctantly, as if the salty sea was his chosen element and that he resented this summons to return to the gravity of the earth. Around him stretched Holkham beach, six straight miles of open sand, backed by pine woods, facing the North Sea. In high summer a crowd of several thousand could be entirely lost on this vast swathe of pristine beach. Shaw had been delighted after seeing Shakespeare in Love at the cinema in Lynn with Lena to discover, in the credits, that the final breathtaking vistas of Viola stepping ashore in the untouched New World of the seventeenth century had been filmed right here, a few miles along the coast from Surf!. (A still from the film was now framed over the bar.)
Copon began the long wade out of the shallows.
According to Fortis, the Marsh House administrator, Copon lived at Flat 18, Houghton House, South End, Lynn. Uniformed branch had checked the address out and found it occupied by an elderly couple who had been in residence for nearly thirteen years. They’d never heard of Javi Copon, but they did think immigrants were ruining the country, although Spaniards weren’t as bad as Portuguese, or Romanians. DC Twine had asked around, finding Copon had several friends on the staff at Marsh House. One, a Spanish woman who made beds, had told them where to find him if the sea was running a swell.
If Shaw had been alone he’d have joined Copon in the sea rather than dragging him out on dry land. How many more days as good as this would there be before winter blew in from the pole? The offshore breeze was creating perfect waves in a moderate swell. Surfers called such waves A-Frame – ideal, high-backed, curling breakers, offering the expert the chance to stay up on his – or her – feet for several hundred yards.
Javi was compact, muscled, with a good set of surfer’s teeth, which disappeared when Shaw flashed his warrant card and told him everything he needed to know about the death of Ruby Bright.
‘Why the false address?’ asked Shaw.
Javi worked a hand round his neck and slipped the zip on the wetsuit, shrugging himself out of the top half, so that it hung loose, making him look like a multi-legged pond-skater. Steam rose off his flesh, which was strangely pale, with black hair matted in swirls.
‘You need an address to get the job. I make it up, they don’t check. No one ever checks, right? Otherwise I never get work nowhere. I live here, in a camper van, and go up and down the coast. November I’ll drive home. Three years now I come back to Marsh House. It’s a lifestyle, the whole …’ He waved his arms around to indicate some invisible over-arching structure. ‘The whole corporate world, it can’t handle people like me.’
He produced a small oilskin package from the suit pocket, within which was a crumpled pack of Gitanes and a lighter.
‘Where’s home?’ asked Shaw.
‘Zarautz,’ he said, drawing in the nicotine.
Shaw knew of the town, a surfer’s paradise on the north coast of Spain, once patronized by the royal families of Europe, keen to escape the searing heat of the south. Shaw suspected that Copon was a middle-class boy, drawn to radical, anti-capitalist politics.
‘I need to wash the suit down,’ said Copon, and so they set off towards the woods, a path opening out, leading due south.
The Spaniard’s VW Camper, no
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