overcooked bacon, the colour of a kipper. His head was small for his body, compact and round, but he held it low, as if it were dense and heavy, and he didn’t quite have the energy to hold it up. One oddity: his hair was short and mousey, receding, revealing ears without lobes, which Shaw could imagine gently shrivelling away when exposed to the sun out on the sands.
The office had a desk, a metal filing cabinet and a sixties drinks cabinet and bar. A set of golf clubs stood in one corner, a patina of dust over the wooden heads of the drivers. The single picture window stood tilted open.
‘You like fresh air,’ said Shaw.
Narr looked at the window as if he’d never seen it before, one hand rising, touching his ear where the fleshy pod of the lobe should have been. ‘I’m in and out, there’s no point.’ He smiled without showing his teeth. The Norfolk accent had been ironed flat, but the ghost of it was still there, marking him out as a local.
The wall behind the desk held a large noticeboard covered in cuttings and pictures. Shaw noted one of Narr and the rest of the Police Committee on a visit to St James’s to meet the Home Secretary. An old print of the Fisher Fleet, packed with the jostling masts of the herring boats. But the dominant image was a photo of a football team in blue‐and‐white hoops, the team badge enlarged at the foot showing the blue cockleshell and the name: Wootton Marsh FC. Duncan Sly, the gangmaster he’d met out on Styleman’s Middle, stood to one side in a smart black tracksuit, carrying a physio’s bag.
‘Hope you two don’t mind, but we’re gonna have to do this on the run,’ said Narr, stuffing some papers into the pockets of his jacket. As they walked out to reception he stooped down and moved the fire nearer to his secretary, closing the window. ‘I’ll be gone a bit,’ he said. ‘You might as well enjoy it.’
They all walked briskly across the yard into a large shed which reeked of ozone. Thousands of oysters lay in metal trays, water splashing over them. Shaw breathed it in, feeling his pulse rise, the stench of the sea almost narcotic.
‘Brancaster,’ said Narr, picking one up and turning it like a diamond. ‘London order, West End.’ He worked his way along the side of the table, which vibrated slightly like a prospector’s pan.
Shaw kept precisely one pace behind. ‘Have you seen this?’ He produced his sketch of the man recovered from the sands at Styleman’s Middle. ‘You don’t recognize the face?’
‘Uniformed copper came round yesterday with it, we all had a look. There’s something familiar about it – but who knows?’
Narr picked an oyster out of a bucket, took a short knife from his pocket and expertly slid the blade into the folds of the shell, twisting his wrist and opening it out to reveal the flesh within, the colour of a summer cloud. He rolled it down his throat. ‘That’d be your job?’ he said. ‘Finding answers.’
In the next shed thousands of cockles were being turned gently in vats of water.
‘Stookey blues,’ said Narr, picking one out and prising the shell open to reveal the clam‐like creature within, milky white with a hint of opalescence. But he didn’t eat it, tossed it instead into a pail of broken shells.
Shaw was tiring of the lecture. He noticed they’d left Valentine back in the last shed chatting to one of the factory women.
‘Mr Narr, is it conceivable that someone, some group, could be smuggling merchandise onto Ingol Beach without the cooperation, possibly tacit, of your men on Styleman’s Middle?’
Narr picked up a handful of the cockles, turning them over in his palms. He walked to the side of the shed and took down a short wooden plank from the wall, at each end of which were wooden handles. He put it on the concrete floor and stood on it, bending his knees so that he could grasp the handles.
‘This is a jumbo,’ he said. ‘When you get out on the sand you put it down and then rock on it, like this.’ He swayed vigorously from side to side. ‘The movement sucks the cockles towards the surface, then you rake it to get ’em out.’ He stood. ‘You don’t get a lot of time for sightseeing. Believe me – I did it for ten years and I don’t remember enjoying the