‘Quite. Which is where I’d like your help.’
Dryden didn’t believe in fate but he felt that he’d been waiting for this moment for two years. Stubbs wanted a favour – and favours deserved repayment. He saw a fading manila envelope in a locked filing cabinet marked ‘Dryden – Laura Maria: RTA. Confidential’. Inside, perhaps, was an explanation and a clue. An explanation of why the police had so far refused to let him see the file and a clue to the identity of the man who had pulled him from Harrimere Drain and driven him to the hospital. Now, at last, he saw a way of getting to read it.
Stubbs coughed unhappily into the echoing silence of the pool. ‘We’re getting the witness into the station on Monday to try and put together a poster.’
‘How many pictures of heads with caps on have they got?’
Stubbs’s face creased in what might have been anger. ‘Look. I’ve been honest…’
Dryden made eye-contact.
‘… as I can be… We now think our man is local. He may well be working with others – also local. If they read in the paper that the police are confident they can put out a photofit of the killer then they may panic.’
Dryden always looked at people’s hands when they said the word panic. Stubbs were dry and still.
‘They may do a runner. Break cover. Try to build an alibi. We – I – would like you to run the story in The Express on Tuesday. It’ll get picked up everywhere else and we’ll arrange for a separate briefing for the Standard in London – just in case our boys are outsiders. You can write what you like…’
‘But you’d like me to refrain from the truth – that the photofit, if it was ever published, would simply remind half the male population of East Anglia under fifty of the other half…’
‘Indeed. In fact we’d be happy if the article gave the impression that we were confident the photofit – which we will say we plan to publish on Wednesday – will bear an uncanny resemblance to the man we are seeking urgently in connection with the Lark murder.’
Dryden could guess the rest. When the photofit did not appear the police would simply announce that they were close to an arrest and did not want to alert the killer by revealing his identity. He crushed his plastic coffee cup and attempted to lob it into a bin – it caught the edge and bounced back into the antiseptic pool. They watched it bob on the miniature waves.
But that, thought Dryden, was only half the plot. ‘And your disciplinary tribunal is when?’
Stubbs blushed, the blood breaking through the barrier of talc. He looked suddenly younger and uncertain. For the first time Dryden considered the possibility that they were the same age.
‘Tuesday.’
‘Bit desperate, isn’t it?’ Dryden could see them now. Stubbs waiting nervously outside while they read the front page of The Express and its promise of a breakthrough in the hunt for the Lark killer.
Stubbs watched the cup bob in the pool.
‘What are their options?’ Dryden was beginning to enjoy himself. He fished in his jacket pocket and retrieved a half-eaten sausage roll.
Stubbs’s complexion reflected the watery green of the pool. ‘Demotion. Slapped wrist. Who knows?’
‘But if they spend Tuesday reading how the Lark murder inquiry – under the inspired leadership of Detective Sergeant Andy Stubbs – has got one up on those flash bastards from the Regional Crime Squad they might be more inclined to put the Pocket Park incident down to inexperience?’
They smiled together. Dryden’s normally immobile features were lit by a rare flash of real excitement. Stubbs made several small movements designed to signal that the meeting was over. Dryden contrived to miss them all.
‘And all this would amount to a favour?’
Stubbs looked wary. ‘Of sorts. Clearly you’d be ahead on the story.’
‘Although the story would be hogwash of course, even if it was exclusive hogwash.’
Dryden looked at the detective sergeant’s hands. He was nervously tracing the crease on his trousers. He decided to let Stubbs sweat a bit before offering a straight swap – the story in the paper for the file on Laura’s crash.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep in touch.’
Dryden pushed his chair back, letting the plastic screech as it tore across the tiles.
7
Dryden found Humph’s cab waiting for him just outside the Tower’s gates. He was asleep but he had a paper note tucked into the chest pocket of his Ipswich Town tracksuit. The cab driver’s memory was poor and important messages were always consigned to paper and prominently displayed.