Later she recalled, briefly, her husband whispering to her that the ambulance was coming. Then no more. She would not regain consciousness for nearly three weeks. The rest of her life was punctuated by severe bouts of depression and the recurring image of the jagged slit of a mouth in a black, woollen balaclava. The teeth she recalled were small, white, and perfect, like those of a child.
Saturday, November 3rd
8
At weekends Dryden abandoned time but embraced food. PK 122’s handsome ship’s clock had stopped at 9.19 a.m. – in 1948. He removed his wristwatch on Friday night, a tiny ceremony which gave him immense pleasure. During the week he grazed on a conveyor belt of pork pies, crisps, sweets, and anything else he could get in his pockets. At the weekend he ate Big Time: and first call was the Box Café, affectionately known to a small but undiscerning clientele as Salmonella Sid’s. He walked to town along the river bank in the hyper-clear air which follows a snowstorm. About six inches had fallen in the night and it was still held by frost to the pitched cathedral roof on the horizon. He stopped on the bank and studied the south-west transept through pocket binoculars. The scene-of-crime lamp was still in place – as was a single policeman, huddled in the high doorway through which he had climbed last night. He hoped it was the incompetent Sergeant Pate.
Salmonella Sid’s was a steam box. A wall of hot air and grease hit you when you came through the door. Dryden ordered the Full English and settled down with a discarded copy of the Mirror. The body on the roof of the cathedral had made a paragraph on page ten: HEAVENS ABOVE! Nice touch. He made a note to bill them – like most of Fleet Street they were lousy payers. He’d check the rest of the tabloids when he got to the office. He’d filed 350 words for the Telegraph, Times, and Independent as well; they’d ordered and would eventually have to pay up whether they ran the copy or not. The Guardian had just taken a paragraph and he guessed they might send a staffer out to do a colour piece. The News, his old employers, had taken 350 words. He doodled on the Mirror with a biro. If the tabloids used it as well as the serious papers he’d make about £700.
Not bad for an hour’s work – even if it had been at one in the morning.
Loaded down with enough cholesterol to block the Channel Tunnel he headed for the office. The front counter was open taking ads but the rest of the building was empty. Henry had a flat above the offices on the third floor but enjoyed a private entrance from the backyard to his flat. At weekends the only indication of his existence was the occasional creaking board and the strains of Radio Three. Jean, the bellowing deaf telephonist, had Saturdays off. A long line of temps dealt patiently with enquiries from readers who all seemed to like shouting.
Dryden checked his answerphone.
‘Dryden?’ He recognized the languid tones immediately. He imagined the Reverend John Tavanter at the payphone mounted in the hallway of the retreat at St John’s. ‘Bad news I’m afraid. The vandals returned last night after we’d left. Persistent, aren’t they? They attacked the stones again and crushed the pieces nearly to rubble. Dreadful mess. No one heard anything of course. I thought you might want to know… I’m at home Sunday evening if you need to ask any further questions. You mentioned a picture. If the photographer rings me at the centre in Cambridge I can meet him there any time Sunday afternoon. Cambridge 666345. Goodbye, Dryden.’
However hard Dryden tried he could never imagine Tavanter saying: ‘God bless’.
A second message: ‘Andy Stubbs here. Swansea have come up with the name of our man on the roof.’
Dryden cursed loudly; he’d hoped it would take them longer. This way the dailies got a crack at the story before his next deadline. It was another favour from Stubbs – and a useless one.
‘It’s Thomas Shepherd, no middle name. Shepherd spelt S.H.E.P.H.E.R.D. Official address given as Belsar’s Hill – that’s a gypsy site out on the Great West Fen. We’ve checked the files and at the time of his disappearance in the summer of 1966 he was a suspect in a robbery and attempted murder investigation. The robbery took place at…’
Stubbs’s notebook crackled.
‘The Crossways garage on the A10 on July 30th – you may have a file on that if The Crow was published. Our file is pretty pathetic. His finger…’ Dryden’s tape cut out.
Third message: ‘Sorry. As I was saying – his fingerprints were found at the scene. He went to ground immediately after the robbery. His family claimed he was in Ireland. He was never seen again by a reliable witness. He was nineteen. On the run, clear evidence which would have put him inside for fifteen years at least, and half the force looking for him – looks like a reasonable scenario for suicide to me. There were two other members of the gang, never identified. The inquiry was closed down in 1968 but had made very little progress once Shepherd had disappeared. Hope that helps.’