They sat in the conservatory amongst orchids, a vine, and a spreading fig tree. A grandfather clock ticked in one corner and the interior wall of the house supported thirty timepieces, mostly antique.
‘Hobby?’ said Dryden.
The former deputy chief constable looked through him. ‘Was.’
On a marble table an intricate glass mechanism gurgled with flowing water. An elegant glass bowl fed water down a pipe to power a tiny gold mechanism which, through a series of flywheels and gears, turned the hands on a filigree clock face. Dryden examined the carved teak base. An engraved silver plaque said: ‘To Deputy Chief Constable Bryan Stubbs on the occasion of his retirement. From his colleagues in the Cambridgeshire force.’
‘Clepsydra,’ said Stubbs. ‘A water clock. The Egyptians had them.’
The heating was generous and all the ice and snow had melted from the roof and windows. The furniture was wicker with comfy cushions, striking unfortunate echoes of an old people’s home. A woman, who remained nameless and unintroduced, brought tea and biscuits for Dryden, a small glass bucket of whisky for Stubbs.
‘How can I help, Mr Dryden?’
Dryden eyed the whisky furtively. The curiosity he had heard in Stubbs’s voice on the phone had evaporated. Some of the bonhomie of the introductions had evaporated too. He felt like an intruder on borrowed time. And the trickling water clock reminded him of the two pints of bitter he’d bolted down at Newmarket. He shifted uneasily in his chair.
As always in times of supreme insecurity he decided to attack, but Stubbs got there first. ‘Where did they find the gypsy boy?’
Dryden sipped his tea, he was damned if he was going to be intimidated by an ex-copper. The clocks chimed four and he glanced at the water clock. The elegant face read four o’clock precisely. He saw now that the fretted metalwork picked out a picture. Dogs running with hounds.
‘His body was found yesterday afternoon on the roof of the cathedral. It had probably been there since the summer of 1966. There wasn’t much left but it appears he jumped from the West Tower. The detective leading the case…’
‘My son.’ Stubbs blinked slowly, blankly. Dryden read disappointment in the look, almost antipathy. He decided to fill the silence rather than let it be.
‘What did you think had happened to Tommy Shepherd?’
‘At that time we felt certain he was being protected by someone, someone able to send him away, or someone able to keep him hidden. Looks like we were wrong…’
‘Yes. If it was suicide. Or it could be murder. Another member of the gang?’
Stubbs swallowed an inch of his neat malt whisky. ‘Possible, but unlikely. In my experience the gang members would have separated after the robbery and kept well away from each other. They would have been in a state of panic anyway – they’d seen the injuries to that poor woman…’
Panic. Dryden looked at the old man’s hands. One lay dead on the arm of the chair, the other gripped the whisky with easy practice. Stubbs gazed out into his garden. ‘They, the robbers, must have presumed she would die of those injuries. At first, of course, they wouldn’t have known that Tommy Shepherd had left his prints inside the Crossways. The plan would have been to split the money right after the robbery, possibly as they drove away. One of them would have had to keep the cups of course – but that could wait in the circumstances.’
For a crime that had happened more than thirty years ago his recall of the details was remarkably clear.
Then they would have dumped the car and gone back to whatever alibis they had concocted – if they’d bothered at all. When we let the press know we wanted to interview Tommy Shepherd he might have tried to contact the rest of the gang, but they’d hardly be likely to welcome such an approach. They must have had some arrangement for keeping in touch, possibly a meeting place, and a prearranged time. My guess is that would have been several weeks later. In the meantime we felt he was holed up somewhere, and fed and clothed by someone.’
‘You don’t think he could have lived rough on the Fen?’
‘A bit John Buchan, don’t you think? We looked hard for Shepherd for nearly six months, right into the winter. There’s no way he could have survived out there, let alone coped with the boredom. He wasn’t the type to curl up with a good book, you know. He would have tried his luck at some point and made a break for it.’
‘What about the rest of the camp at Belsar’s Hill? Surely they could have hidden him. Got him out?’
Stubbs paused and inspected the contents of his glass. ‘What exactly is the status of this interview, Mr Dryden?’