‘Your ball game. Off the record – all for background.’
‘You can have the information by all means – this is a case I would particularly like to see tied up. The reasons are my own but entirely professional. But nothing traceable, please. That’s clear?’
‘Yes. It is.’
Stubbs pressed a buzzer beside his chair. The unknown woman returned to refill the whisky bucket. This took a few minutes during which no word was spoken. Stubbs seemed to be in a world of his own, one apparently run on alcohol. As the woman filled the glass a sneer lingered on the former deputy chief constable’s puffy face.
When he took up the story again his voice was heavier and oiled: ‘We knew Tommy Shepherd was still in the area in the weeks after the AIo robbery. He sent us a letter. Or, to be exact, he dropped us a letter. By hand – but almost certainly not his hand.’
Dryden had lost the plot. A letter? Handwritten?’
‘Yes. If you could call it that. Someone’s education had been sorely neglected.’ The disfiguring sneer again. ‘It said that he would give himself up and provide us with the names of the rest of the gang if he could be assured of preferential treatment.’
Stubbs drifted off again into self-absorbed silence. So Tommy offered to shop the rest of the gang – that presented two decent motives for murder.
‘And your reply?’ prompted Dryden.
Stubbs’s eyes swam back into focus. ‘None. We planned a brief one at first. He asked us to make a statement to the press indicating publicly what the position would be. I was happy to do that. After all, according to the caravanette driver the man fitting Tommy’s description was not in the Crossways when the raid began. We would certainly have cut him out of the GBH or murder charges. Plus his role in bringing the rest to book, due no doubt to his sense of remorse at the injuries inflicted on Mrs Ward, would have helped soften the judge.’ The sneer reached theatrical proportions. ‘We would have been happy to plead for leniency.’
‘But?’
‘Command of the operation had passed to the Yard. They wanted to review the case – it took them a few days. By the time they agreed with our original decision Tommy had gone. We never got a reply. Now we know why, do we not?’
He hoovered up some more malt.
‘Where was the letter delivered?’
‘To one of the village stations – house at Shippea Hill. Middle of nowhere. It was found in the postbox early one morning.’
‘How do we know it was genuine?’
‘He put a fingerprint on it, in coal dust. Very neat. My guess is that he had gone to ground locally. As I say we were sure someone was sheltering him. Sherlock Holmes might conclude a coal cellar was likely. Whatever. He was in the Fens.’
The heat in the conservatory had begun to steam the windows. Trickles of water ran down the green-tinted panes. Stubbs was lost in a haze of dreamy mellowness. Dryden guessed he had already said much more than he’d planned.
‘So. How far had your inquiry got before the Yard arrived?’
Stubbs stood abruptly. Dryden stood too, expecting to be thrown out. But the former deputy chief constable was already out of the conservatory door and heading for a pine cabin at the foot of the open paddock behind the house. His gait was long and surprisingly steady. The dogs appeared from nowhere to circle their master.
By the time Dryden got to the cabin the door was wide open and Stubbs was sitting at a desk pulling open the drawers. The cabin was clearly a den. Books lined one wall and filing cabinets the other. A single word processor stood on the desktop with a printer attached. A paraffin heater was pumping out heat.
‘Memoirs,’ said Stubbs, by way of explanation. ‘Here.’ He handed Dryden a brown file marked with a reference number and the single word: ‘Crossways’.
Dryden looked inside.
‘They’re copies of course, they all are. An entire career. I’d like this one back. Don’t show it to anyone else please. Especially my son. Anyway – he should be able to get the originals. Not that he’d know what to do with it. Good luck, Mr Dryden.’
‘What do you want me to prove?’
‘The truth. It would tie up a loose end.’
He patted what looked like a manuscript. His finger found a buzzer on the desktop while he tidied sheets of paper into neat piles. The silent woman appeared again with the inevitable refill. Dryden was ushered out wordlessly.
Humph asked no questions when he got back to the cab but flipped on the tape, bathing the cab in Catalan conversation. They sped back to Ely thinking of entirely different things: an intimacy they often shared and certainly enjoyed.