There was one more message. It was Stubbs again.
‘Hi – sorry, you asked about cause of death. That far back it’s impossible to make even an educated guess. Coroner likely to go for death by misadventure and leave it at that. He’s already released the body for burial. The pathologist says both thighs were broken and one leg – the right I think – had broken in so many places it was virtually powder. The right arm was also badly broken. Looks like he fell on that side. Left arm and leg are intact. One oddity. All the fingers on the right hand are broken just above the middle knuckle.
‘Anyway, he must have hit the roof with a hell of a crash, probably near the apex, and then slid into the gutter. Our blokes say that with injuries like that he couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes – especially on a cold night. I didn’t tell you any of that. Everything is non-attributable. Bye.’
Stubbs was clearly trying hard to win Dryden’s help in publishing the photo fit story. There must be a good chance they were going to demote him. Embarrassing at the best of times, but even more so for the son of a former deputy chief constable.
The Crow had been published every Friday since the beginning of 1946. Before that it had come out on Thursday – market day. In 1982 Henry had launched The Express, a down-market tabloid for Tuesday. It was designed to protect The Crow’s Friday circulation by deterring free newspapers.
Paper copies of The Crow were too unwieldy to store, but the library had them on microfiche. Dryden inhaled a cup of coffee from the machine and wrapped himself in the greatcoat. The library was a brutal sixties block nicely situated right outside the cathedral. The cold snap had kept the borrowers at home. Dryden headed straight for the records room in the basement.
He found the first report on the robbery in early August – the Friday following the raid. There was an update each week and plenty of coverage throughout the summer’s so-called silly season when news was scarce. The location of the Crossways filling station on the main route north to the coast helped keep the story topical throughout the school break. The condition of Mrs Ward also kept the story going. She was on the critical list for four weeks and did not finally return home until Christmas.
According to the cuttings, the Crossways was a very different place from the one she had left in an ambulance on 30 July. Her husband had sold out to Shell and the café had closed. An interview with the couple in February 1968 said they had decided to keep the bungalow and run the garage on a franchise. The mechanic, the other witness in the robbery, left to work in King’s Lynn.
Dryden read and reread the reports. The evidence against Thomas Shepherd was conclusive: his fingerprints at the scene and the description given by the motorist who stopped for petrol were good enough. But his decision to flee the police hunt was just as eloquent of guilt.
Had Shepherd been on the run for years before his death on the cathedral roof? Or did he jump within hours of seeing the injuries to Amy Ward at the Crossways and hearing the radio news that the police were on his track?
One thing made Dryden uneasy – it was a fact rather than a question. The identity of the police officer who had first led the hunt for the A10 robbers before Scotland Yard had been called in to take over the investigation in early 1967: Detective Inspector Bryan Stubbs, then at the start of a career that would take him to the giddy heights of Deputy Chief Constable. A fine career in detection that he must have then hoped would be carried on by his son, Andrew.
Dryden got back to the office via the High Street butchers where he bought a hot steak and kidney pie and three sausage rolls. No point in dying of hunger.
He looked Stubbs Senior up in the directory. It was a Newmarket number. Dryden was surprised it wasn’t ex-directory – most ex-coppers were. A rare display of public accountability? Or arrogance?
Stubbs Senior answered on the tenth ring. After a brief introduction Dryden said what he wanted. He reckoned he had less than a one in fifty chance of getting anything out of him – and even that was certain to be background only.
‘It’s about a case you investigated in 1966. The papers called it the World Cup Robbery…’
Dryden left silence as a question.
‘Yes. Yes, of course, I remember it well.’
‘There’s been a development.’
If the former deputy chief constable made a reply it was lost in the chimes of what sounded like a shopful of clocks. Dryden checked his wristwatch: 11 a.m. precisely.
Stubbs Senior didn’t bother to explain. ‘Don’t tell me that gypsy kid has finally turned up?’
Dryden wondered how close the Stubbs family was. Had they talked that morning?